Lessons learned from 2 years of bootstrapping

2 years ago I said goodbye to my beloved colleagues to bootstrap my own startup together with @filipminev.

Here’s what my young bootstrapping journey thought me:

1. Prepare for failure

We failed to grow our first startup in travel tech. COVID didn’t help us, but startups fail for all kinds of reasons. We decided to pivot 6 months later and started building the MVP of Tally.

2. Save up

It took almost 2 years before we started paying ourselves a salary. Make sure you have the runway to last for a while and cut down as much as possible on living expenses. Even though you’re bootstrapping, bills still need to be paid.

3. Keep it simple

Launch your MVP asap. We spent a couple of weeks on market research, while building our MVP and launched it soon after with very limited functionality. We had one simple landing page, no pricing model, no onboarding and a Slack group to connect with users and collect feedback.

→https://blog.tally.so/product-hunt-launch/

4. Do things that don’t scale

Do everything to get your first customers. We spent months reaching out to startups and sending cold DM’s. You can read more about how we got our first users here.

→ https://blog.tally.so/year-1-how-we-bootstrapped-tally-to-11k-users-and-5k-mrr/

5. Clear division of responsibilities

Working together with my co-founder and partner in life has made things easier and more complicated at the same time. With a clear division of tasks and responsibilities you will come a long way. We use Notion to manage almost everything.

6. Marketing matters

‘Just’ building a great product won’t cut it. Looking for marketing tips for startups? Follow @AngeZanetti @helloitsolly @Kevonchueng @robertodigital_ and many more…

7. Find ways to hold yourself accountable

Without a boss or investors, it’s difficult to hold yourself accountable to your goals. We set weekly goals and keep track of them in a Google Sheet. You can also

• Build in public
• Share your progress on Indie Hackers
• Get an accountability partner
• Join communities such as RamenClubHQ

→ Great article on SaaS growth benchmarks https://chartmogul.com/blog/good-monthly-growth-rate/

8. Say no (often)

Time is your most valuable asset and you can not satisfy everyone when you have a small bootstrapped team. When roadmap planning gets tough, consider the effort versus the outcome. We wrote more about this topic here.

→ https://blog.tally.so/how-we-bootstrapped-tally-to-10k-mrr/

9. Users always come first

Our growth is fueled by our customers, not by investors. And since we’re customer-funded, our users are our number 1 priority. Offering laser-fast customer support and making our users happy comes first, revenue growth comes second.

10. Follow your own path

Our goal is not to raise funds, but to create a sustainable lifestyle business. Being independent allows us to grow at our own pace, and make choices independently in the best interest of our users. Everybody has different goals and ways to reach them. Don’t blindly follow any (life and product) advice you’ll get, but figure out first what you find most important in life.

And last but not least: don’t forget to celebrate the (smallest) wins. Your building a business from scratch all by yourself and you should be extremely proud of it!