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My wife and I are bootstrapping a business, and we're nearly at 100 customers (92 right now). I would not say it's an easy road. We've been working on it full t
by csytan 8y ago
My wife and I are bootstrapping a business, and we're nearly at 100 customers (92 right now). I would not say it's an easy road. We've been working on it full time for 1.5 years so far.
A couple things I've realized while doing this:
1. Business is a competition. Much like in sports, skills are only built up through practice. For an entrepreneur this means actually selling something. You will start at level 0. There is no substitution for actually doing the work.
2. The bigger you grow, the easier it gets. A year ago we were running around like headless chickens not knowing what to focus on. Now that we've got a core group of customers, and it's much easier to decide where to go. We can start to plan a month or two months out now. Opportunities such as partnerships also present themselves as your business grows larger.
- Kagerjay 8y agoUnrelated but I found your portfolio site to be really funny with the pointer clicks and portrait changes Business looks interesting but Im not the target demographic
- itsbenlee 8y agoAppreciate your perspective. Which portfolio site are you referring to?
- Kagerjay 8y agohttps://csytan.com https://csytan.com
- itsbenlee 8y agoNever heard of him ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- kornish 8y agoKagerjay's comment is responding to csytan's comment, not your post.
- itsbenlee 8y agoAh...sorry lads! couldn't tell on mobile :-)
- alexchamberlain 8y ago> sorry lads Come on, we can do better than that. This isn't an ol' boys club.
- scrollaway 8y ago"Lads" is an appropriate, albeit very british, way of addressing men, which the poster above was doing. Why the noise?
- dheral 8y agoWhy not address all readers, instead of only men?
- forcemajeure 8y agoApparently you can use 'guys' now instead
- scrollaway 8y agoThe poster above was not addressing readers, but rather three specific people.
- alexchamberlain 8y agoLittle disappointed to be so downvoted for calling this out; I don't really do it very often. Also a brit, but I didn't know that the others in the conversation were men. It's pretty easy to use `guys` instead.
- sbilstein 8y agoHow long did it take you to build your product? My partner and I are bootstrapping have customers but I’m always way behind on product as a solo dev.
- PopeDotNinja 8y ago> The bigger you grow, the easier it gets I guesstimate it's easier to grow until start hiring, and hit the point where you can no longer directly manage everyone who works at the company. And if you've never hired & managed people, being new to having employees is it's own kind of adventure!
- goatherders 8y agoMy perception from going through growth again this past year is that the sooner you can get your organization organized the easier it gets. I can't recommend the eMyth books enough for most anyone starting a business. Systemizing things, particularly the things that are rudimentary, is the fastest way to get to a healthy business. I also ran around for months like a chicken with my head cut off. Once I hired some help (contractors mostly) to do some of the tiny tasks that were massive time sucks my life got easier and my business got healthier.