Achieved self sustainability

We have been a bootstrapped startup and have been paying salaries from our own revenue, but things took a downturn last year when we had a sudden dip in revenue due to low bitcoin prices. We had to let few of our employees go to keep running.

Fortunately after an year, we are now in a better state and have enough runway in bank to last a quarter even with zero monthly revenues. I had few lessons which I would like to share:

Profit First - https://profitfirstbook.com/

Before reading this, I was surviving on almost zero salary and putting in revenue back into the growth of our startup. This resulted in undue stress personally and I had to do side gigs sometimes to keep things going. The principles of profit first and keeping revenue for ourselves have really helped us.

Chase happiness not growth

Hearing stories of VC funded startup makes you believe the only measure of startup is fast growth which is completely wrong! Now instead of over-hiring, we focus on keeping existing employees happy, keeping low costs and being lean and happy. We also constantly say no to more features. Rework by Jason Fried is a recommended read