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Show HN: Barnacl.es, a community news site for never-funded bootstrappers
- c17r 10y agoSee also http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/ http://discuss.bootstrapped.fm/
- onethumb 10y agoAs a bootstrapped founder, exciting to see communities like this forming and rising. It's such a non-traditional way to start, build and grow a business in Silicon Valley that it can be baffling for new founders or those that want to try something "different". I've been encouraged by the recent success of the Tugboat Institute and its Evergreen movement, too, FWIW: http://www.thetugboatgroup.com/ http://www.thetugboatgroup.com/
- vox_mollis 10y agoIt's such a non-traditional way to start Doubt this. Remember that VC is only available to those who already have an "in" with the social proof network of the VCs. We, like many many others, bootstrapped our business out of necessity, not out of choice.
- dreyfan 10y agoWe bootstrapped 4 years ago and after a year we had enough revenue to pay ourselves a small paycheck. Kept the platform and team lean the entire way. Today we're a team of 3 people and we closed out 2015 with $2M in revenue. The growth was definitely a lot slower in the beginning but retaining control (instead of taking VC) has been a very positive upside.
- onethumb 10y agoI suppose I should have elaborated on our journey. The nutshell is that we've been in business for 14 years, bootstrapped and profitable, and currently employ more than 120 of the best people I know. It can be done, even in Silicon Valley. :)
- sandGorgon 10y agoI was just checking this out yesterday because there were some pull requests on lobsters referencing barnacles. This is the first of many spin-offs using the lobste.rs source code and I think it's a cool initiative!! One of my feature requests to lobsters was to incorporate Oauth provider so it becomes an alternative identity/auth source. The invite tree and the moderation log will cause it to be one of the most trusted of these providers. My request was rejected by jcs, but it will be cool to see you incorporate this.
- jarcane 10y agoWhy “Barnacles”? The venture capitalists own the term “startup” and it’s not worth fighting over. There isn’t really any perfect term for this business niche, so I punted on trying to invent one. The term is "small business." There are millions of them all over the world. More of them than there are "startups" by number at the least. It never ceases to amaze me how warped and myopic the tech industry's understanding of the world is.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gphil 10y agoThe problem with using "small business" as a blanket term is that they vary widely in stage and ambition. For example, it's a mouthful to distinguish between "brand new small business" and "established small business" as well as "small business that intends to stay small" and "small business that intends to pursue growth to become medium-sized or large-sized without taking dilutive investment."
- coldtea 10y agoFor 95%+ of small businesses in the world, it's "small businesses with no VC involved, and who intent to stay small" [1]. Startups in the SV notion of the term don't even compare in number, even in the US. Heck, every accounting firm you see, it's such as "small business". Every local grocery store. Every restaurant. Every ice cream parlor. Every jewelry maker. The list goes on and on... [1] Well, they wouldn't say no to striking it big, but it's not like SV founders dreaming of $10B exit.
- derefr 10y agoSmall businesses (or SMEs, even) are categories that include start-ups, though—at least during one phase of a start-up's lifecycle. There is no single "advice for small businesses" (except maybe "pursue grants"?) because different SMEs have different trajectories, and thus different spending/hiring/etc. strategies. There really does need to be a term for "SME pursuing a growth-heavy strategy, to the degree that's possible without outside assistance."
- marktangotango 10y agoI thought 'boot strapping' was formerly shareware, and later, misv. Discuss.joelonsoftware.com was once very active for this.
- pavlov 10y ago"misv" means "micro-ISV", right?
- vram22 10y agoyes.
- Harkins 10y agoShareware was a business model. Bootstrapping is the best current term I know of, but I've also seen it used by startups saying they didn't take a seed round in advance of Series A. I would love to bring back some of the vibe of the Joel on Software forums.
- andrewfromx 10y agoi really like the name. I'm trying to start officecrashe.rs which: 1) is a barnacle type idea - i.e. even if company doesn't make money, I'll run it because that's success to me. and 2) after registering my first .rs domain and dealing with all that comes with a domain like that, I feel for the barnacl dot es people.
- fiatjaf 10y agoWhat comes with it?
- andrewfromx 10y agowell it's not a .com. Lots of little differences. Try it and you'll see.
- fiatjaf 10y agoI own alhur.es, don't use it commercially, but haven't seen any difference.
- andrewfromx 10y agodifferences I've noticed: 1) some email validaters don't accept the domain as a valid email 2) it's more expensive that a normal .com 3) there's less of a need for www. infront of a non-.com (IMO) 4) sometimes when typing out the domain it'll turn hot and clickable, sometimes not 5) you are super hipster and cool with a non-dot-com
- jwr 10y agoExcellent idea. I hope the site will gather critical mass and become a living community. I suspect the community might become more Europe-oriented, because it’s more difficult to get funding here and there are more bootstrapped businesses as a result.
- marvindanig 10y ago> I suspect the community might become more Europe-oriented, because it’s more difficult to get funding here and there are more bootstrapped businesses as a result. You underestimate the number of bootstrapped businesses here in the US. :)
- matt_o 10y ago> I suspect the community might become more Europe-oriented, because it’s more difficult to get funding here and there are more bootstrapped businesses as a result. It's also a lot harder to set up any sort of business in most places in Europe, at least compared to doing it in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if this community will become centered on North/South America and Asia. In the US, you could start selling widgets instantly (all legally, taxes taken care of). Getting an LLC (something like a GmbH/Ltd) set up takes around 1-2 weeks tops, securing a company credit card - a few days. Source: Self-employed US expat in Germany.
- nekopa 10y agoYou could go the way of a UK Ltd company, 4 hours to set up via an incorporation website. I've used it to set up companies - US Ex-pat living in the Czech Rep. Works all across the EU. (At least until the Brexit happens)
- matt_o 10y agoThanks! I'll look into that! I'll still have to take care of taxes locally here (tax residency, grumbles), which are the biggest time sink. Maybe I should hop the border into the Czech Rep. :)
- biztos 10y ago
- kmfrk 10y agoI feel so goddamn old writing this, but please make the font size slightly larger.
- JDDunn9 10y agoctrl +
- mbarrett 10y agoI use stylebot chrome extension.
- MasterScrat 10y agoAnalytic tools should record when their readers manually adjust font size, and give a hint to the developers that they need to fix their design.
- nacs 10y agoOr the operators would just use it to record how many older/visually-challenged people are visiting their site and target ads towards them.
- petercooper 10y agoAnalytic tools should record when their readers manually adjust font size Interesting idea! Is that actually possible? Does increasing zoom (as in Chrome) actually affect any styles?
- MasterScrat 10y agoIf you look at this project: http://tombigel.github.io/detect-zoom/ http://tombigel.github.io/detect-zoom/ You can't get zoom level directly anymore, but you can monitor the "Device Pixel Aspect Ratio". This tells you enough to know if the user zooms in /out.
- rubidium 10y agoAny way to get invited and retain being anonymous like you can on HN?
- jordigh 10y agoAlthough this is a Lobsters instance, it's not invite-only: https://barnacl.es/invitations/open https://barnacl.es/invitations/open Go forth and sign up in a veil of secrecy!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- jsprogrammer 10y agoIsn't this site engaging[0] in brigading and vote-ringing? [0] https://barnacl.es/s/bwd2dt/please_upvote_the_show_hn_on_barnacles https://barnacl.es/s/bwd2dt/please_upvote_the_show_hn_on_bar...
- sillysaurus3 10y agoYes.
- niftylettuce 10y agoVery cool. I have been lurking to find a dedicated YC News-like Bootstrapper site for a while.
- squeaky-clean 10y agohttps://barnacl.es/s/bwd2dt/please_upvote_the_show_hn_on_barnacles https://barnacl.es/s/bwd2dt/please_upvote_the_show_hn_on_bar... :( C'mon, aside from being uncool, doing this is likely to get the post automatically removed from the front page.
- m52go 10y agoIt reminded me to up-vote. I see nothing wrong with it. It would be distasteful if incentives were offered in exchange for up-votes...but as it is, everyone's free to do as they please.
- sillysaurus3 10y agoThis is blatant vote manipulation. In fact, can "vote manipulation" be defined any other way? It sucks that someone created an awesome site and then decided to ask for upvotes, but it's not ok to do that.
- icedchai 10y agoIf you don't think it's okay, don't give them an upvote.
- sillysaurus3 10y agoMore like if you don't think it's okay, flag the post.
- petercooper 10y agoIn fact, can "vote manipulation" be defined any other way? Political campaigning.
- tripzilch 10y ago> In fact, can "vote manipulation" be defined any other way? What's worse, I believe that clicking one of those little triangle icons is literally equivalent to direct vote manipulation.
- sjs382 10y agoInteresting, but probably not enough differentiation to fork the community, really. Nonetheless, I've signed up (https://barnacl.es/u/sjs https://barnacl.es/u/sjs) and added it to my personal aggregator. Good luck!
- johnchristopher 10y agoOff-topic and out of curiosity: What software/hn clone do you use ?
- Harkins 10y agoIt's based on the Lobsters codebase, and my fork is available on GitHub. * https://lobste.rs https://lobste.rs * https://github.com/jcs/lobsters https://github.com/jcs/lobsters * https://github.com/pushcx/barnacl.es https://github.com/pushcx/barnacl.es
- junko 10y agoThis is super refreshing! I really hope that this community lasts. For me, even though I passionately believe in my project, the biggest problem is that I can't motivate myself on a day-to-day basis, so I end up getting distracted. But I do notice that when I discuss my project with friends and family, I can get rolling again. Going to a startup event gives that effect too, but lesser as I always feel out of place - I don't want external funding as huge as VC's, nor am I in a hurry to scale it asap and so on. It seems that "organic" growing is most suitable for my profile; yes I want to make a profit but I also want to make it a personal enrichment (my project is art/education based). But without peer "push", the project can stretch for years at this rate! A community like this could be a game-changer :)
- meesterdude 10y agoI have a prediction: starts out strong, but devolves into shameless self promotion. Its a common trend i've seen in a handful of "startup" focused groups. But maybe this time will be different.
- api 10y agoI've seen the same. How has HN (partly) avoided this? I guess having a separate "show" category helps. I think the high-brow tone helps too. Sometimes it chafes but it's way better than the alternative. People do self-promote here but to get away with it you have to have some actual substance... any "hey look at me I am awesome" stuff tends to get buried.
- petercooper 10y agoHN had both the cultural and financial backing and motivation for a core group to keep the site on target day after day in the early days. And it grew slowly. Most communities that don't make it start in a blaze of glory then the curators/moderators tire of keeping that fire blazing day after day.