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Why I'm running a bootstrapping conference in Vienna, Austria
- dotcoma 16y ago>the land of glorious socialism. as if it were a bad thing not to have to worry about your medical insurance fucking you up if you get sick...
- ido 16y agoSounds like a great idea, but honestly - I would never pay 250 euros[1] for attending such a conference. Good luck though, hopefully I'm just not your target demographic :) [1] for a frugal Viennese hacker aiming at ramen (knödel?) profitability, 250 euros is almost 2 weeks' living expenses.
- ahoyhere 16y agoYes, I'm very familiar with that party line... and that is part of what's keeping you down. If you want to be successful in business, you've got to learn the idea of investing for returns. 2 weeks' living expenses in exchange for the opportunity to learn from people who've made anywhere between "a very respectable living for one person" to "millions a year" seems worth it to me. You can listen to their stories. You can walk up to them. You can ask them questions. Do you really think that you're not going to see 250 euros of value for that ticket? The question of whether to go to a conference, or spend money on a professional designer, or hire an assistant, or outsource some copywriting, or a lawyer... they are all the same question at heart. To run a successful business, you absolutely have to pay for things. End of story. You cannot do it all yourself. If you need to pay for something, and you don't have the money, you figure out how to earn more so you can pay for the thing and free yourself to earn even more money after that. Look, I don't care whether you personally come, I'm not making a profit and - more importantly - there are people lining up for that ticket from Denmark, France, Italy, and even Serbia. I just want you to question your assumptions so that you have a chance of succeeding.
- ido 16y agoWell, as I said I'm probably just not in your target demographic. I would like to give you one tip tho: He not only took his product from spare-time to $2 million, he's also a true mensch! I think you are using that word the way you would in Yiddish, in Austrian German referring to someone as "mensch" can sometimes actually be seen as derogatory ;)
- pistoriusp 16y agoI was also confused by a friend who came back from New York and referred to someone as a mensch. It means human being or person in German.
- ido 16y agoApparently it means "whore" in Austrian slang [1]. I'm not a native Austrian, but was told several years ago by a friend that I shouldn't use that word as people might misunderstand what I meant by it... Might be a Tyrol thing tho. [1] http://www.dict.cc/deutsch-englisch/Mensch.html http://www.dict.cc/deutsch-englisch/Mensch.html
- ahoyhere 16y agoUm, sure that's not somebody pulling somebody's leg? The slogan for DM is "Hier bin ich Mensch" and I'm pretty sure they don't mean "whore." If it also means "human" and "wow!" I can't see how I can go wrong. FTR, I asked my husband, who is Wiener.
- madrobby 16y agoThe thing is, if you learn how to bootstrap a business you can easily make those 250 euros your daily expenses, without looking twice.
- MartinMond 16y agoI'm from Vienna. I recently started letsannotate.com. It's absolutely true that role models help extremely. When my cofounder and I were in the really early stages we often were looking for inspiration and while we knew very well that lots of US and many UK bootstrapped SaaS products exist and thrive, we feared their success wouldn't easily translate to us. We were thinking "Oh maybe people from the US and UK won't buy from continental europeans, who aren't native speakers, wo live in a different time zone, where (in the US case) totally different laws apply" and while in no way this was going to make us stop, it was constantly nagging in the background of - at least - my mind. It has turned out this is not the case. As of today there was exactly one case where a company from the US told us they'd love to use our product, yet feared to export their sensitive data to the EU. But before we knew that from hard evidence we had inspiration: letsfreckle.com (Vienna), mite.yo.lk (Berlin) and mindmeister.com (Vienna and Munich) exist and thrive just as well as US based SaaS providers. And this is IMHO what Amy Hoy is talking about in her blog post: These were our role models and while I don't think we would have stopped creating letsannotate.com if we wouldn't know about their success stories, it certainly helped to know we weren't the first to step into this unexplored terrain of bootstrapping in continental Europe.
- Smamol 16y agoWhat a brilliant idea! IT/internet entrepreneur role models were exactly what I missed out on growing up in Vienna. Thanks for organizing this, Amy. I'm sure it'll be hugely successful. (Believe me, I would attend did I not happen to live in New Zealand :-) Sandy
- fbnt 16y agoI may be completely wrong here, but sometimes I fail at recognizing the real ROI of such conferences, especially in terms of knowledge that I don't know yet. Also, having the speakers being some kind of rockstars (Peldi is been 'on tour' all summer so far, does he ever work on Balsamiq?) might create a huge gap between you and them, and this dosen't help creating solid connections in most of the cases. I'm not sure if the 'you've got to spend money to make money' motto applies here, but again, I may be wrong. Any real-life experiences on this kind of events?
- ahoyhere 16y agoSo, let's review. Potential "rockstars" from companies with multiple employees & big revenue: Peldi, Tom P-W. Single founders who have stayed single and/or turned mom&pop (husband+wife team): Geoff, Garrett. Not that there's a thing with G's or anything, but I think it's pretty clear from the get-go that I've (handpicked) a real mix of speakers, and only half are announced so far! Additionally, if you want to get a perspective of how these "rockstar" guys act, think, and teach, they have essays online very clearly demonstrating that they do not think like rockstars, or talk like rockstars, but like everyday, thoughtful, smart, friendly people who want to help others succeed: http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/11/03/how-to-meet-your-next-cofounder.html http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/11/03/how-to-meet-your-ne... http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2009/08/13/donating/ http://www.balsamiq.com/blog/2009/08/13/donating/ And before you go "OH, well, one of those is a year old and one is almost two" - be serious. These are personal values at stake here, and they don't change overnight. If they had, I wouldn't be inviting these guys to speak. As for the ROI - well. I can't tell you what ROI you'll get because I can't tell if you're going to sit in the back and read HN comments, or pay attention and take notes. I can't tell if you'll stare at the speakers without working up the nerve to say hello, or if you'll buy them a beer and strike up a conversation. Those things are beyond my control as an organizer. But I can tell you that there is a tremendous amount of POTENTIAL ROI. That's how we designed the conference. EDIT: By the way, do you think the only valuable thing is "knowledge"? Cuz I bet you know what you have to do, but you're not doing it. That's not "knowledge" - all you need for "knowledge" is books. But it is something you can get from being around people who are doing exactly what you want to do, and hearing them tell war stories. We have one speaker, who you've never heard of, who runs more than 3 SaaSes you've undoubtedly heard of. We have another who is just starting his SaaS journey now and I picked deliberately for his approachability. (But all others are living off their products.) And then, of course, there's me - veteran procrastinator, one SaaS in the world, another couple in the oven, one ebook, multiple training courses, and a veteran speaker of many conferences and former committee member of OSCON. Trust me - it's not possible that you've put more thought into questioning this type of event than I have.
- aposch 16y agoHi, my name is Anita. I'm from Vienna too. I started wienett.com and raumdirekt.com some years ago. I can say it's not only "Angst" that prevents Austrians from being entrepreneurs but also it' s the political and social system. many friends of mine - employees - say they would never be so silly (!) to give up their social security they have being employed. yes it's true, we need role models and we need changes in our school system (learning business), in our insurance system (microbusinesses are treated like big companies) and in our mindsets. I'm on the schnitzelconf mailing list and hope to be in the second batch of early bird tickets ;-) and yes: I'd love to spend 250 euros to be able to meet new faces and people from abroad.
- ahoyhere 16y agoHi Anita! Nice to meet you! I really hope you'll come to Schnitzelconf, your projects look awesome! Either way, we should at least meet for coffee sometime. For the record, your friends are extra silly. You know that self-employed people (selbständig) in Austria have social health insurance, pension, and even unemployment coverage? My husband is selbständig and he even has a part-time employee, all without creating a GMBH. (Don't get me started on how GMBHs are superior to the American LLC!)
- ido 16y agoMy husband is selbständig and he even has a part-time employee, all without creating a GMBH. (Don't get me started on how GMBHs are superior to the American LLC!) This might be getting off-topic, but I would personally be interested to hear the aforementioned opinion about GmBHs.
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- schmidp 16y agoI'm from Vienna as well and this sounds great. If I manage to get my hands on a ticket, I'll definitely attend. And € 250 or € 300 are certainly cheaper than hopping on a flight to london or the states to hear and meet guys like those announced. And even if I don't manage to learn anything from them (what I don't believe), I can at least deliver some feature requests for balsamiq first hand :-)
- jessor 16y agoi so hope i can grab a ticket!