Software Ideas launched publicly on July 5th of this year. 145 days later, it officially hit $10k in monthly recurring revenue!
$10k is the milestone that I think most founders have their sights on when they launch their company. This is the milestone that I was looking forward to the most!
I'd like to share some thoughts of what I've learned throughout the experience:
I started Software Ideas with a strong focus on building a product that people already wanted and were willing to pay for.
That focus was a huge piece of the puzzle for creating a rapidly growing product.
I did this by asking for pre-sales up front, so that I knew if someone really was going to pay. I've shared more details about the pre-sale process here and here
As a developer, I came to the bootstrapper community thinking that my profession was the most important part of building a company. Now, I view that as dead wrong.
While building a quality product is important, it's just the starting point.
The biggest piece of a business, which bootstrapped founders tend to overlook, is your ability reliably get your product in front of new potential customers.
As a early-founder, your job is to quickly find a model that allows you to reliably put your product in front of new people, and then to have an offering good enough that they reliably purchase.
I see so many people, including readers of my newsletter, who go straight to building an MVP once they have an idea. They don't realize that they are skipping the most important step of figuring out the distribution puzzle piece.
The fact that Software Ideas was able to figure this out from the beginning led it to reaching $10k MRR so quickly.
I hope this inspires people to give distribution much more thought!
One of the toughest struggles throughout this journey has been in how high the highs are, and how low the lows are.
The problem is, the lows hurt a lot more than the highs help, and that's something that you need to prepare yourself for.
I clearly remember my first unsubscribe. The first hateful email, the first time I was sworn at because I didn't respond to a customer email within 24 hours. Even though the positive comments outnumber the negative ones 10:1, you'll get stuck on the negative ones if you let yourself.
I've found that gratitude is key in keeping yourself sane, and so is letting yourself feel down and upset every now and again. These negative things are inevitable as you grow, and I don't think it's realistic to say that you can just overcome them emotionally. Sometimes you just need to let it hit you, wash over you without completely consuming you, and then let it go and move on.
To the 500+ readers of Software Ideas, I can't express my gratitude enough. The support you've all shown this project is amazing and I am excited for all of the cool things that are coming up in the next few weeks!