My Fourth Year as a Bootstrapped Founder
Four years ago today, I quit my job as a developer at Google to create my own self-funded software business. This is a review of my fourth year and what I've learned so far about bootstrapping software businesses.
mtlynch.io
This was a very enjoyable read!
It really shows how long it takes for a business to hit the ground running, and I appreciate you sharing what growth experiments/marketing channels you explored to try to hit your revenue targets, year after year.
I like how you finally struck a deal with your European distributor, and then your sales just naturally stabilized and grew from there.
I think there's a very good lesson to learn there, not just for hardware entrepreneurs like yourself but also software entrepreneurs.
Would you consider making deals with more distributors?
IIRC that's how Microsoft grew into a behemoth.
By partnering with endless hardware manufacturers, and then the rest is history.
Thanks for reading!
Yeah, I'd consider it, but I'm not really sure how to find more of them. I think most distributors would need higher volumes than what TinyPilot offers.
Several people have emailed me in the past year offering to distribute TinyPilot in X country. I always say that I'm open to it if they want to share their plan, and then they just stop responding. I think people like the idea of it more than the actual execution of it. The distributor I partnered with actually responded with a plan, so it worked out.
There's a really good bang-for-the-buck partnering with a distributor in Europe because they have easy trade with other countries in the EU. I'm not sure if there are other zones similar to that.
Four years ago, Indie Hackers inspired me to quit my Google job and try building my own software business. It's been a rocky journey, but 2021 was the first year I reached profitability, and I earned over $470k in revenue across my businesses.
Happy to answer any questions or take any feedback about this post.