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Patrick never ceases to deliver on value to this community and many others. Even though this is a story about how he latest startup didn't go as planned (he's n

Patrick never ceases to deliver on value to this community and many others. Even though this is a story about how he latest startup didn't go as planned (he's now full time at Stripe), he drops knowledge bombs for us all to learn: - knowing when to move on to something new (Appointment Reminder -> Starfighter) when he didn't have the 'fire in his belly'y any longer - financial planning using a simple spreadsheet: the retirement fund! - when to borrow money and how to calculate risk - when to join a company (rather than start something new) - the value of personal leverage (personal and professional development) - when and how to sell your startup - the trials of shipping (six weeks became three years) - setting goals for the future - the value of family I've added Patrick's year in review to a few other bootstrappers and solopreneurs that I have felt are helpful, instructive or inspiring: http://startupclarity.com/a/bootstrappers-2016-year-review/ http://startupclarity.com/a/bootstrappers-2016-year-review/

gizmo 10y ago
Patrick is an excellent writer and a great member of this community, but perhaps you should re-evaluate whether he's really this business genius dropping knowledge bombs. Not to be a downer, but none of his startups really worked out. None of his products turned into viable businesses. I think some of his business advice is downright dangerous. For instance his willingness to sacrifice his health (multiple times) on self-imposed death marches is very bad. Also I'm baffled by his evaluation of Appointment Reminder. If you don't want to run that kind of business, why start it in the first place? It just doesn't make sense. Don't start a restaurant if you don't like the grind of running a restaurant.
- cityzen 10y ago
  I agree with this. I appreciate everything Patrick has spent his time writing and sharing but it's hard to reconcile the writing to the reality sometimes. There's a lot about his world I just don't understand. In this post (https://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/05/01/talking-about-money/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/05/01/talking-about-money/) he talks about a 30k/week "rack rate" (I don't really get this term), yet he closed down his most profitable revenue stream which would allow him a good salary (i'd guess more than Stripe is paying) for a mere six weeks of work per year. I don't know Patrick and don't know his motivations but there is always a good deal of talk about being a salaryman (sounded miserable) and charging a lot of money, so why the most lucrative business he had was shuttered is beyond me.
  - cperciva 10y ago
    Two things come to mind here: First, a "rack rate" typically means an advertised rate, which gets discounted under a variety of circumstances. Second, I believe that's gross, not net.
    - nstj 10y ago
      Net of what?
      - cperciva 10y ago
        Expenses. ISTR that Patrick did a significant amount of travelling for consulting gigs. (Which may also be a reason for avoiding them now that he has a wife and child.)
        nstj 10y ago
        Sure - so let's say you have PI insurance of $100/week, and you do an international flight each week also at $1000/rt. This still leaves you with $28,900/week pre-tax? What other major expenses can you see with private software consulting?
        cperciva 10y ago
        A "rack rate" is not a typical rate, so he'd presumably take in less money than you're assuming. He lives in Japan and most of his customers would probably be in the USA, so if he wants to be able to function he should be flying business class. He also needs somewhere to stay, transportation, and food while in the customer's city; and it is the nature of consultancies to not have anywhere approaching 100% utilization, due to time spent on research, promotion, and networking, and the fact that gigs never fall neatly into your schedule. I'd guess that "full time consulting" would work out roughly along the lines of * Average billing per week of consulting: $15k * Round trip business class airfare: $3k * Hotel, food, transportation at destination: $2k * Profit per week of consulting: $10k * Weeks spent doing consulting per year: 20 * Take-home (gross) salary: $200k I'd guess this is more than Stripe pays him, but not dramatically more; and if I had a wife and child I would certainly prefer to not spend half the year away from them.
- j_s 10y ago
  none of his startups really worked out Feels like 1/2 of the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast! Which is to say, sharing the experiences when things didn't go as planned is also helpful.
rick_perez 10y ago
I've been following Patrick since the old BoS days. He is great at marketing, but isn't a very good example of a 'solopreneur' or a bootstrapper. If any of his companies were making him a good enough living, I don't think he would have gotten a day job at Stripe. "when he didn't have the 'fire in his belly'y any longer" I've been running my own company for almost 5 years after 5 years of side-projects and failures. To actually go from a project to a successful company, you need to do lots of boring work that has nothing to do with technology or development. Most of it is a slog, but is still required. You can eventually outsource this and hire other people, but this will take some time. You will lose your fire at some point, but you still need to push through this. I've tried to partner with many different friends over the years on different business ideas and ventures. They all failed at some point because my partner (usually another developer) would get bored when things got tough or they had to work on something other than a cool library. If you can't get through this, it's probably better to stick to working a job. The other problem with Patrick is that everything he builds is from a developer perspective. Starfighter was a cool concept, but much too complicated for most people (from the business side of things. You need to spend time and money with tutorials attempting to convince business owners why this new concept is better than what they are currently using).
- forgetsusername 10y ago
  >He is great at marketing, but isn't a very good example of a 'solopreneur' or a bootstrapper. This is actually the lens through which I view his writings: master solo marketer. He's managed to build a brand around these parts that, when viewed critically, is hard to explain. That's not easy. Some of the business decisions described here are baffling.
  - sanderjd 10y ago
    > Some of the business decisions described here are baffling. Which ones?
    - forgetsusername 10y ago
      Running up $120k in credit card debt? Paying $3k per month in interest on that debt while piling money into an app where "expenses grew faster than revenue"? I know this stuff happens. I've been there, done that. But I don't have a reputation as a business guru, either.
jodrellblank 10y ago
- Appointment reminder: how to ignore a business for four years, while not improving it and giving you stress - financial planning using a spreadsheet, then moving to more expensive lifestyle, getting in debt and having the retirement fund turn negative when he has a wife and child and is closing down his companies. Something we can all learn from? - when to borrow money and how to calculate risk: Except he says not to trust his calculation of risk when he encourages the reader to play poker against him if possible because he's so bad at risk estimation. - when and how to sell your startup: again no, he says it put him in a bad position to be wanting to sell quickly, and he glosses over 'how' with "I know how because I've done it before". The only good read there is "don't wait until it is declining before selling, like Bingo Card Creator was". - the trials of shipping (six weeks became three years): the trials of promising and pre-selling a thing, then changing your mind and doing a startup instead, and trying to turn that into a positive. (Aside: Three years? I wonder how long before there's a reasonable chance that some of the purchasers died before the release?) - setting goals for the future: where he keeps saying he didn't meet his goals, or they have changed? - the value of family: "I had not felt as effective as a husband / father recently as I wanted to be" - the value of family is lower than a side-business he was bored of and wants to sell? Lower than a "huge amount of personal fulfillment" that he got instead during that time? Lower than the guilt of refunding customers over his video series? If you were a potential customer and he said "I choose to spend more time with my family, I can't do this work justice, sorry, here's a refund", wouldn't you be fine with it? I don't dislike him at all, I do respect him, and I like the transparent views into his life and businesses and plans and thoughts, but I'm not seeing the same things you are at all. If anything these are more cautionary tales along the lines of "you can sometimes get what you want with hard work, but it comes with a price".
- notabeliever 10y ago
  brave post for not using your throw away account.
  - jodrellblank 10y ago
    Eh, there's limited utility in trying to hide how much of an idiot I am. If you want an honest comment, my main feeling was more of envy that patio11 could build and run and sell a six figure business he didn't really care about, and had the choice of a startup, a job, or consulting, with experience that he's well capable of all of them, and that he can stop off on the side to record some videos that even in a world of YouTube and online courses, people will pay in advance for, sight-unseen. I really do respect him. And I really don't want to follow him into a life of consultant marketing, business reminder software, on-call phone stress, sign-on funneling or salarymanship.

gizmo 10y ago

Patrick is an excellent writer and a great member of this community, but perhaps you should re-evaluate whether he's really this business genius dropping knowledge bombs. Not to be a downer, but none of his startups really worked out. None of his products turned into viable businesses. I think some of his business advice is downright dangerous. For instance his willingness to sacrifice his health (multiple times) on self-imposed death marches is very bad. Also I'm baffled by his evaluation of Appointment Reminder. If you don't want to run that kind of business, why start it in the first place? It just doesn't make sense. Don't start a restaurant if you don't like the grind of running a restaurant.

cityzen 10y ago
I agree with this. I appreciate everything Patrick has spent his time writing and sharing but it's hard to reconcile the writing to the reality sometimes. There's a lot about his world I just don't understand. In this post (https://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/05/01/talking-about-money/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2015/05/01/talking-about-money/) he talks about a 30k/week "rack rate" (I don't really get this term), yet he closed down his most profitable revenue stream which would allow him a good salary (i'd guess more than Stripe is paying) for a mere six weeks of work per year. I don't know Patrick and don't know his motivations but there is always a good deal of talk about being a salaryman (sounded miserable) and charging a lot of money, so why the most lucrative business he had was shuttered is beyond me.
- cperciva 10y ago
  Two things come to mind here: First, a "rack rate" typically means an advertised rate, which gets discounted under a variety of circumstances. Second, I believe that's gross, not net.
  - nstj 10y ago
    Net of what?
    - cperciva 10y ago
      Expenses. ISTR that Patrick did a significant amount of travelling for consulting gigs. (Which may also be a reason for avoiding them now that he has a wife and child.)
      - nstj 10y ago
        Sure - so let's say you have PI insurance of $100/week, and you do an international flight each week also at $1000/rt. This still leaves you with $28,900/week pre-tax? What other major expenses can you see with private software consulting?
        cperciva 10y ago
        A "rack rate" is not a typical rate, so he'd presumably take in less money than you're assuming. He lives in Japan and most of his customers would probably be in the USA, so if he wants to be able to function he should be flying business class. He also needs somewhere to stay, transportation, and food while in the customer's city; and it is the nature of consultancies to not have anywhere approaching 100% utilization, due to time spent on research, promotion, and networking, and the fact that gigs never fall neatly into your schedule. I'd guess that "full time consulting" would work out roughly along the lines of * Average billing per week of consulting: $15k * Round trip business class airfare: $3k * Hotel, food, transportation at destination: $2k * Profit per week of consulting: $10k * Weeks spent doing consulting per year: 20 * Take-home (gross) salary: $200k I'd guess this is more than Stripe pays him, but not dramatically more; and if I had a wife and child I would certainly prefer to not spend half the year away from them.
j_s 10y ago
none of his startups really worked out Feels like 1/2 of the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast! Which is to say, sharing the experiences when things didn't go as planned is also helpful.

rick_perez 10y ago

I've been following Patrick since the old BoS days. He is great at marketing, but isn't a very good example of a 'solopreneur' or a bootstrapper. If any of his companies were making him a good enough living, I don't think he would have gotten a day job at Stripe. "when he didn't have the 'fire in his belly'y any longer" I've been running my own company for almost 5 years after 5 years of side-projects and failures. To actually go from a project to a successful company, you need to do lots of boring work that has nothing to do with technology or development. Most of it is a slog, but is still required. You can eventually outsource this and hire other people, but this will take some time. You will lose your fire at some point, but you still need to push through this. I've tried to partner with many different friends over the years on different business ideas and ventures. They all failed at some point because my partner (usually another developer) would get bored when things got tough or they had to work on something other than a cool library. If you can't get through this, it's probably better to stick to working a job. The other problem with Patrick is that everything he builds is from a developer perspective. Starfighter was a cool concept, but much too complicated for most people (from the business side of things. You need to spend time and money with tutorials attempting to convince business owners why this new concept is better than what they are currently using).

forgetsusername 10y ago
>He is great at marketing, but isn't a very good example of a 'solopreneur' or a bootstrapper. This is actually the lens through which I view his writings: master solo marketer. He's managed to build a brand around these parts that, when viewed critically, is hard to explain. That's not easy. Some of the business decisions described here are baffling.
- sanderjd 10y ago
  > Some of the business decisions described here are baffling. Which ones?
  - forgetsusername 10y ago
    Running up $120k in credit card debt? Paying $3k per month in interest on that debt while piling money into an app where "expenses grew faster than revenue"? I know this stuff happens. I've been there, done that. But I don't have a reputation as a business guru, either.

jodrellblank 10y ago

- Appointment reminder: how to ignore a business for four years, while not improving it and giving you stress - financial planning using a spreadsheet, then moving to more expensive lifestyle, getting in debt and having the retirement fund turn negative when he has a wife and child and is closing down his companies. Something we can all learn from? - when to borrow money and how to calculate risk: Except he says not to trust his calculation of risk when he encourages the reader to play poker against him if possible because he's so bad at risk estimation. - when and how to sell your startup: again no, he says it put him in a bad position to be wanting to sell quickly, and he glosses over 'how' with "I know how because I've done it before". The only good read there is "don't wait until it is declining before selling, like Bingo Card Creator was". - the trials of shipping (six weeks became three years): the trials of promising and pre-selling a thing, then changing your mind and doing a startup instead, and trying to turn that into a positive. (Aside: Three years? I wonder how long before there's a reasonable chance that some of the purchasers died before the release?) - setting goals for the future: where he keeps saying he didn't meet his goals, or they have changed? - the value of family: "I had not felt as effective as a husband / father recently as I wanted to be" - the value of family is lower than a side-business he was bored of and wants to sell? Lower than a "huge amount of personal fulfillment" that he got instead during that time? Lower than the guilt of refunding customers over his video series? If you were a potential customer and he said "I choose to spend more time with my family, I can't do this work justice, sorry, here's a refund", wouldn't you be fine with it? I don't dislike him at all, I do respect him, and I like the transparent views into his life and businesses and plans and thoughts, but I'm not seeing the same things you are at all. If anything these are more cautionary tales along the lines of "you can sometimes get what you want with hard work, but it comes with a price".

notabeliever 10y ago
brave post for not using your throw away account.
- jodrellblank 10y ago
  Eh, there's limited utility in trying to hide how much of an idiot I am. If you want an honest comment, my main feeling was more of envy that patio11 could build and run and sell a six figure business he didn't really care about, and had the choice of a startup, a job, or consulting, with experience that he's well capable of all of them, and that he can stop off on the side to record some videos that even in a world of YouTube and online courses, people will pay in advance for, sight-unseen. I really do respect him. And I really don't want to follow him into a life of consultant marketing, business reminder software, on-call phone stress, sign-on funneling or salarymanship.