Ask HN: Bootsrappers who were Software Engineers. How was your journey?
I am very interested in bootstrapping as at least from the outside it looks a lot more like what I want to do compared to what I am currently doing (Software Engineering for FANG). I have no aspirations of becoming a Software Architect/Director etc; and Bootstrapping just feels nice.
1. Did you already have revenue before you quit? 2. How many pivots did it take for you to get the 1st dollar? 3. How was revenue growth like? 4. Did you/ do you want to go back to Software Engineering? 5. Did you do it Solo or with a friend? 6. What's your story?
A very interesting question, which prompted me, a silent HACKERNEWS user, to post my first comment.
I graduated from university in 2007 and started my first job as a programmer. I began full-time entrepreneurship in 2010.
I am in China, working in the internet industry. The company I work for is listed on NASDAQ and is comparable to the level of the FANG companies.
Over the past 14 years, I have undergone two entrepreneurial ventures, both of which have been successful. One of the companies is relatively large, with hundreds of employees, while the other one is quite small, with around 20 people, both running stably.
Here are my answers to the questions:
1. No, and I had no income after resigning, this is a fact.
2. Countless pivots, extremely tormenting.
3. The income curve was zero for a long time, even during the stable operation periods of the businesses, the income and profit fluctuated from time to time due to the global situation and economic conditions being very unstable in recent years.
4. I have always maintained the habit of coding and might fully return to software engineering in my next venture, possibly by starting a game software company.
5. The first one was with friends, and the second one I completed independently.
6. Entrepreneurship is very difficult, and earning an income is hard. I think the key point of my personal story is that my financial situation was very dire for a long time. Since programmer salaries are very high, my colleagues who didn't venture into entrepreneurship had a very comfortable life, while I was tormented every day. After 14 years of entrepreneurial life, my personal financial situation improved around the 7th or 8th year. Of course, I am now a standard affluent class (currently 40 years old), but I am not intoxicated by wealth. My mental state also experienced significant ups and downs, and there was a period when I had to rely on medication. During this process, I gained some religious beliefs, which have enriched my perspective on the world.
I'm potentially starting similar journey. I made really good money in industry but I can't stomach the idea of working on someone else's project anymore. So starting my own thing but not making much money yet. Do you ever wonder if just staying in your job would have been better?
Actually, no decision is simplely good or bad.
Continuing to work at my current company would certainly be more comfortable, and I wouldn't have to endure any struggles, but that's not the life I want.
Like you, I can't stand working on projects for others; this stems from my personality. It's undeniable that most people can tolerate it, even if they don't enjoy it.
It was after 7 or 8 years of starting my own business that I began to see decent financial returns. Looking at the entrepreneurial journeys of other programmers around me, it's roughly the same pace. So if you are going to start a similar journey, remember to tell yourself every day that tomorrow will definitely be better.
BTW, Why is it so difficult to get started?
I looked back and realized that it's because we are targeting an incremental market.
If we were aiming at an existing market, it would likely be much easier.
>> I looked back and realized that it's because we are targeting an incremental market.
>>If we were aiming at an existing market, it would likely be much easier.
Maybe. We have 3 products. 1 was basically "first mover computerized manual processes" (that's doing well, and we have serious market share), 1 was a niche area that we came to "early" in the cycle. Once we decided to do that "in a business way" (most everyone else in the niche was doing it as a side gig ) we dominated.
The 3rd came along much later. We had a superior product, better support, better everything. Penetration into the market has been very slow and very hard. Existing users in the space are mostly "happy enough" with what they have. Getting customers to switch is a LOT of work. After almost a decade in the space we're slowly being accepted as a legitimate option.
So new markets may be slow, but you grow as they grow, and you become hard to unseat. Old markets can be really hard to penetrate.
The grass isn't greener on the other side, the grass is greener where you water it.
my current thinking is that working for someone else will read to misery/what ifs but will be comfortable for sure especially in high paying big tech
working for self will have a lot of suffering, at least I will have tried & I can give myself sometime after which I can resign to working for someone else again; at least for a bit
both paths have some suffering, with second the suffering has meaning
How do you see bootstrapping without leaving the day job until the project takes off?
Bootstrapping is about building a business first, and developing software second.
We took 5 years of little to no income to realise we were in the business of business, not the business of software.
The years we spent writing software were more-or-less wasted, once we realized that -marketing- and sales were the drivers the we spent time on that, and less time dreaming up new things to write.
In other words when evaluating new ideas the primary questions become "Who is the market? How will I reach them? Can I afford that? Can they afford this? Will they care enough to pay cold hard cash?"
Before that we evaluated ideas on merit "is this cool? Does it have utility? Is it better than what already exists?" All of which are meaningless if there's no market share left, if you can't reach the customer, if they're not in enough pain to care, or if they can't afford you.
Once this truth that our focus is business not software, THEN we started making enough money to get paid salaries. But nothing like FAANG level salaries.
Go for it. You will fail a lot. But where there’s a will there’s a way. And the “end” is so worth it.
Similar story: I was working in software, and over the years I literally felt pain to think about working for someone else for the rest of my life. After lots of side projects alone and with friends, with VC—backable and bootstrapped ambitions, I could just feel it in my bones that solo-bootstrapped B2C-software-entrepreneurship was the best fit for my skill strengths and weaknesses, temperament, and desired lifestyle.
1. I left corporate at $3K monthly (not recurring).
2. 0 pivots on the idea that ended up “working”, but countless other side projects before AND after that idea.
3. $0 for many years. Then decided to monetize (one time purchase) a project that had decent usage and traffic. Then a few thousand a month for a year. Moved to subscription pricing and improved it a ton based on my vision and customer feedback. Now a little under $10K/m recurring after a few years from the previous milestone and growing steadily.
4. I never want to go back to working for someone else again.
5. Solo
6. See above. Two critical aspects IMO.
1. I did a lot of side projects. I had a lot of “at bats”. And each time I learned more. I developed more skills sure, but also arguably more importantly learned more about myself: what I wanted and what I could do. And you only need one hit. Doesn’t even have to be a home run.
2. Product and marketing/sales intuition are critical. I wasn’t even a software engineer, but was a technical product person. You can’t just build an impressive technical system. You have to build a product that users love (product vision/sense) and get it in front of them (marketing/sales), with extremely limited time and money (ruthless prioritization).
What's your sales experience? If the answer is "none", then you'll discover that bootstrapping is not nice at all.
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1. Services business, had a few clients that I knew would say yes. 2. None. But trying to pivot away from services to products -- dozens, none successful. 3. When you have a good pipeline of clients, it's great. Then it can all come crashing down to zero in a matter of weeks. 4. I want to, but now I'm essentially unemployable. 5. Solo. 6. Found myself back in academia of all places, and simultaneously advising large corporates on how to make use of language models.
Also an Ex-FANG software engineer.
1. Quit and returned to home country before starting up. I did try the evenings and weekend startup approach, but got close to burn out. For me at least, starting up meant working on something full time.
2. Took 4 pivots and as many years to get our first dollar. In year 2, we did earn some money but was cost of goods sold (travel tickets, building materials, do can't really count that as dollar earned).
3. It was a series of plateaus. Took a long time for the first $10, then about a year to first $1000, then an year to $3000 and then another year to $10K. This is just one data point. Smarter/Luckier people may do it faster/better.
4. I love software engineering. I am still doing it at my startup. I'm doing it my way, learning and experimenting with stuff. Actually my core motivation is to keep doing software (and someday even build a programming language) supported by a team and company creating value for others and getting paid for it.
5. With a co-founder.
6. An article on the initial journey, I wrote down a while back. https://medium.com/messengermarketing/from-quitting-silicon-...
Btw, the idea mentioned at the end of the article also failed. But that final pivot is what we are still working on (in-cart campaign software for Shopify stores). This second half of the journey is still ongoing. Will try to write it down someday.
I'm still making from my RoR consultant work.
1. Start making the first dollar 2. Pretty straightforward. Offering some APIs for web scraping. 0 pivots 3. Right now, 40USD/month, 1 client 4. Still a full-time worker 5. Solo 6. There are many web scraping websites which are very expensive or slow. I try to focus on fast and reliable with reasonable prices.
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