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«Bootstrapped» with 55k$ and an already succesful business is not exactly boostrapping to me. This achievement is very impressive nonetheless. Growing a busine

«Bootstrapped» with 55k$ and an already succesful business is not exactly boostrapping to me. This achievement is very impressive nonetheless. Growing a business even in a known environment is very hard, I know it first hand. It's especially interesting that he shares numbers, some I'd love to be able to do but money is particularly taboo in my field. Having your accountant and banker tell you that your numbers are actually very good compared to others despite being under the target you set to yourself is especially comforting. Having your banker call you and congratulate you because you're now largely cash flow positive is exhilarating.

elastic_church 10y ago
Yeah thats what bootstrapping is, having enough money to sustain yourself and capitalize the business without outside investors.
borisyankov 10y ago
This absolutely falls in the 'bootstrapped' category, as long as these are not $55k of VC money, but your own.
jacquesm 10y ago
> «Bootstrapped» with 55k$ and an already succesful business is not exactly boostrapping to me. That's exactly what it is. $55K is next to nothing for starting any kind of company, even if you quit your job and start as a freelancer (arguably the simplest kind of company) you'll need some capital to catch you if you have a dry spell. Business that get started on $0 are extremely rare.
- karambahh 10y ago
  It is ten times the median savings an american family has [1] Once again I am not diminishing his accomplishments. I started my own company with the same amount of money but never claimed to have "bootstrapped"it. We on HN live in a bubble that amazes me. I know first hand how much it costs to start a company and how hard it is to raise a 1M€ (I heard it is as hard as raising 10M$ in the valley, but never tried to raise in the US so take that with a grain of salt!). I also know it is much, much harder to get your first 1M€ of revenue. Like one of my business angel once told me "il nest de bon argent que celui du client": the only good kind of money is the customer's. [1]http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/12/heres-how-much-the-average-american-family-has-saved-for-retirement.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/12/heres-how-much-the-average-am...
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    > It is ten times the median savings an american family has The median American family is not trying to start a business. Also: if you can't manage your own funds and save please don't start a company, it will most likely not work and create misery for yourself and others. > Once again I am not diminishing his accomplishments. I started my own company with the same amount of money but never claimed to have "bootstrapped"it. Well, that's a problem of definition more than anything else. If you want to use the term bootstrapping as starting with nothing that's fine by me but I do note that even the word assumes the presence of boots and straps. The key question is if the money was yours or not. If it wasn't then you weren't bootstrapping. > We on HN live in a bubble that amazes me. No, you choose to use terms in ways that are different from the rest of us. That's not a bubble, that's a terms issue. This can make communication hard. > I know first hand how much it costs to start a company and how hard it is to raise a 1M€ (I heard it is as hard as raising 10M$ in the valley, but never tried to raise in the US so take that with a grain of salt!). That depends. There is a lot of 'stupid money' floating around. Besides, raising money is explicitly not part of bootstrapping. > I also know it is much, much harder to get your first 1M€ of revenue. Yes, that's true. > Like one of my business angel once told me "il nest de bon argent que celui du client": the only good kind of money is the customer's. Yes, that's good advice, but it comes from an investor.
    - karambahh 10y ago
      Please bear with me, I am not trying to be a smart-ass like many seem to think, these are honest questions and I think that they also come from using a foreign language and coming from a different culture. I think you're right in calling that a problem of definition. I agree with everything you said about money and investors management. I'd just add that "stupid money" probably isn't the good kind of money :-) At least I know that I would have made a mistake accepting a large amount of that kind of money. Choosing a smaller amount coming from people I trusted more probably helped me a lot in my beginnings. Now to my honest follow-up question: let's say a billionaire puts his 1B$ into a new venture, would you call that "boostrapping" as well?
      - 10y ago
nathanbarry 10y ago
Huh, this is the first time I've heard it suggested that putting all of your savings into a company is not bootstrapping. And to add some detail, it was $5k initially, then $50k when it was time to focus on growth.
sixQuarks 10y ago
are you kidding me? This guy is the definition of bootstrapped. How do you think he got that $55K? He was bootstrapping design courses - I've been following this guy for a few years.
- karambahh 10y ago
  I am absolutely not claiming he didn't work very hard to start his company or earning his money. I am neither claiming he's bad or wrong or anything like that. Like jacquesm said it's probably more of a problem of definition between a dominant one and mine (in other words, looks like I am wrong). I have seen people starting companies with nothing, not even a roof on their heads. I started a company with the amazing comfort of 50k€. I am working hard to make my company a success, but I command the efforts of the guys I have seen eating noodles for years before their company finally took off. We are talking living way below the poverty line here, which is not what I lived when I started a company with 50k€
  - charlesdm 10y ago
    Given how easy it is these days for a developer to make €50k (e.g. by contracting on a day rate fee for a company), there really is no need to eat noodles for years. You do work for 6 months, save up €50k, and live frugally (but not crazy frugal) for a while.
    - karambahh 10y ago
      Let's say 500€ daily rate (which is probably average in France with a very large standard deviation between Paris and deserted zones and factoring varying daily rates which are domain specific and experience related. No way a junior RoR freelance would make 500€ in Massif Central for instance. Likewise, 500 is low for an experienced data science freelance working in banking in Paris). 206500=60k€ gross After social contributions, 30k€ net revenue in France (actually a little more but I take the liberty to round that down). In large cities, 33% of revenue for housing is not uncommon. We're left with 20k€, of which we have to substract revenue taxes (rule of thumb in that revenue range, about 1 month revenue per year) so here 5k€. 15k€ for 6 months. living frugally you can probably save 2/3 so you can save 10k€ in 6 months. Assuming these ratio, it would take 2.5 years of steady, near fulltime employment as a contractor to save these 50k and go all out on your project.
civilian 10y ago
There will also be a bit of a taboo around talking about money, but this site (indiehackers) make it a point of talking about numbers. It's great information, and we should be trying to tear that taboo down.
bbcbasic 10y ago
The book sales created enough profits to bootstrap the email business. To stretch the analogy it like the Power Supply bootstrapping the BIOS bootstraping the Operating System loader.

elastic_church 10y ago

Yeah thats what bootstrapping is, having enough money to sustain yourself and capitalize the business without outside investors.

borisyankov 10y ago

This absolutely falls in the 'bootstrapped' category, as long as these are not $55k of VC money, but your own.

jacquesm 10y ago

> «Bootstrapped» with 55k$ and an already succesful business is not exactly boostrapping to me. That's exactly what it is. $55K is next to nothing for starting any kind of company, even if you quit your job and start as a freelancer (arguably the simplest kind of company) you'll need some capital to catch you if you have a dry spell. Business that get started on $0 are extremely rare.

karambahh 10y ago
It is ten times the median savings an american family has [1] Once again I am not diminishing his accomplishments. I started my own company with the same amount of money but never claimed to have "bootstrapped"it. We on HN live in a bubble that amazes me. I know first hand how much it costs to start a company and how hard it is to raise a 1M€ (I heard it is as hard as raising 10M$ in the valley, but never tried to raise in the US so take that with a grain of salt!). I also know it is much, much harder to get your first 1M€ of revenue. Like one of my business angel once told me "il nest de bon argent que celui du client": the only good kind of money is the customer's. [1]http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/12/heres-how-much-the-average-american-family-has-saved-for-retirement.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/12/heres-how-much-the-average-am...
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > It is ten times the median savings an american family has The median American family is not trying to start a business. Also: if you can't manage your own funds and save please don't start a company, it will most likely not work and create misery for yourself and others. > Once again I am not diminishing his accomplishments. I started my own company with the same amount of money but never claimed to have "bootstrapped"it. Well, that's a problem of definition more than anything else. If you want to use the term bootstrapping as starting with nothing that's fine by me but I do note that even the word assumes the presence of boots and straps. The key question is if the money was yours or not. If it wasn't then you weren't bootstrapping. > We on HN live in a bubble that amazes me. No, you choose to use terms in ways that are different from the rest of us. That's not a bubble, that's a terms issue. This can make communication hard. > I know first hand how much it costs to start a company and how hard it is to raise a 1M€ (I heard it is as hard as raising 10M$ in the valley, but never tried to raise in the US so take that with a grain of salt!). That depends. There is a lot of 'stupid money' floating around. Besides, raising money is explicitly not part of bootstrapping. > I also know it is much, much harder to get your first 1M€ of revenue. Yes, that's true. > Like one of my business angel once told me "il nest de bon argent que celui du client": the only good kind of money is the customer's. Yes, that's good advice, but it comes from an investor.
  - karambahh 10y ago
    Please bear with me, I am not trying to be a smart-ass like many seem to think, these are honest questions and I think that they also come from using a foreign language and coming from a different culture. I think you're right in calling that a problem of definition. I agree with everything you said about money and investors management. I'd just add that "stupid money" probably isn't the good kind of money :-) At least I know that I would have made a mistake accepting a large amount of that kind of money. Choosing a smaller amount coming from people I trusted more probably helped me a lot in my beginnings. Now to my honest follow-up question: let's say a billionaire puts his 1B$ into a new venture, would you call that "boostrapping" as well?
    - 10y ago

nathanbarry 10y ago

Huh, this is the first time I've heard it suggested that putting all of your savings into a company is not bootstrapping. And to add some detail, it was $5k initially, then $50k when it was time to focus on growth.

sixQuarks 10y ago

are you kidding me? This guy is the definition of bootstrapped. How do you think he got that $55K? He was bootstrapping design courses - I've been following this guy for a few years.

karambahh 10y ago
I am absolutely not claiming he didn't work very hard to start his company or earning his money. I am neither claiming he's bad or wrong or anything like that. Like jacquesm said it's probably more of a problem of definition between a dominant one and mine (in other words, looks like I am wrong). I have seen people starting companies with nothing, not even a roof on their heads. I started a company with the amazing comfort of 50k€. I am working hard to make my company a success, but I command the efforts of the guys I have seen eating noodles for years before their company finally took off. We are talking living way below the poverty line here, which is not what I lived when I started a company with 50k€
- charlesdm 10y ago
  Given how easy it is these days for a developer to make €50k (e.g. by contracting on a day rate fee for a company), there really is no need to eat noodles for years. You do work for 6 months, save up €50k, and live frugally (but not crazy frugal) for a while.
  - karambahh 10y ago
    Let's say 500€ daily rate (which is probably average in France with a very large standard deviation between Paris and deserted zones and factoring varying daily rates which are domain specific and experience related. No way a junior RoR freelance would make 500€ in Massif Central for instance. Likewise, 500 is low for an experienced data science freelance working in banking in Paris). 206500=60k€ gross After social contributions, 30k€ net revenue in France (actually a little more but I take the liberty to round that down). In large cities, 33% of revenue for housing is not uncommon. We're left with 20k€, of which we have to substract revenue taxes (rule of thumb in that revenue range, about 1 month revenue per year) so here 5k€. 15k€ for 6 months. living frugally you can probably save 2/3 so you can save 10k€ in 6 months. Assuming these ratio, it would take 2.5 years of steady, near fulltime employment as a contractor to save these 50k and go all out on your project.

civilian 10y ago

There will also be a bit of a taboo around talking about money, but this site (indiehackers) make it a point of talking about numbers. It's great information, and we should be trying to tear that taboo down.

bbcbasic 10y ago

The book sales created enough profits to bootstrap the email business. To stretch the analogy it like the Power Supply bootstrapping the BIOS bootstraping the Operating System loader.