5 ms·

“Indie” doesn't mean “bootstrapped” anymore

67 points by ojosilva 6y ago

jv22222 6y ago
> Jason Fried of Basecamp ... who'd somehow found a way to make millions of dollars building SaaS apps without raising any funding. It's a common misconception to think that Basecamp never took any investment but in fact they did from Jeff Bezos. https://signalvnoise.com/archives2/bezos_expeditions_invests_in_37signals.php https://signalvnoise.com/archives2/bezos_expeditions_invests... That said, it helps prove the OP point that's it's possible to raise funds and remain independent.
- whitepoplar 6y ago
  They were already profitable at the time they took Bezos' money. DHH has stated previously that it was simply to take some money off the table.
  - soneca 6y ago
    It isn’t less ”funding” because of that. I am pretty sure that having the reassurance of this investment helped with the long term mindset that led Basecamp to be such a big company.
    - Ididntdothis 6y ago
      It is less funding. They didn't need the money. Maybe you also want to call profits "funding" because they help with the mindset of building a company.
- soneca 6y ago
  It also at the same time is one less successful example of someone finding a way to make millions of dollars without raising any funding. Every time I see someone using Basecamp as inspiration for bootstrappers I perceive it as very dishonest. That said, I think it is a very good thing that there are more options for funding high growth tech startups that do not require a ”go unicorn or go bust” mindset of the VCs. It certainly a great innovation (even if it’s not exactly a new idea) in the startup ecosystem
  - HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
    > Every time I see someone using Basecamp as inspiration for bootstrappers I perceive it as very dishonest How far are you willing to take this? What if he had borrowed money from his grandma? What if they couldn't afford servers AND rent so they stayed with his parents? Or they couldn't get a lease on their own, so a friend co-signed? The reality is that we all accept some form of help with our businesses at one point or another that takes some of our stress away. You'd be searching long and hard to find people who became successful with no form of investment at all. And even if you did, what would that prove?
    - soneca 6y ago
      It proves nothing to you, I draw the lines of my perceptions to my own benefit. I believe every bootstrapper has some kind of self-funding. So whenever I see a story of a successful bootstrapper, I assume self-funding, and I don't consider it dishonest in my perception of the story. If the bootstrapper happens to be a millionaire already, and the "self-funding" is in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars, I don't consider the inspiration applicable to my own case, but I would probably not call it "dishonest". All of your small-money examples look to me as in this category as both honest and applicable to my case. One of the lines that I draw is that calling "bootstrapper" a company that received, let's say $100,000, from a billionaire in order to help with growth is dishonest in my perception. From the tone of your comment, you seem to have the impression that I am a purist of some sort about the technical definition of "bootstrapper" and that I am policing how other people use it as some sort of crusade. You are wrong. I was sharing the filter that I use when interpreting this kind of story. I create these filters because I am a wanna-be founder myself, and I have decisions to make, decisions that are influenced by what I read about what happened to other people. I have to establish a gross probability of success with each decision. Deciding to pursue funding is one of those decisions. So when I read about bootstrappers I try to filter as honest or dishonest (also along other dimensions, as applicability). So this search of mine of what I consider honest or not would prove nothing to you or to anyone. I don't care. It is not the reason I do it.
      - 6y ago
- new_here 6y ago
  According to this article by DHH they were profitable before taking money: https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-day-i-became-a-millionaire/ https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-day-i-became-a-millionaire/ > Then in 2006, it suddenly happened from one day to the next. Jeff Bezos had taken an interest in Basecamp, and Jason and I each sold him a minority, no-control stake of our share of the company for a few million dollars each (Basecamp had been self-funded and profitable from the start, so didn’t need any capital for the venture).
- agd 6y ago
  DHH has stated that they were already profitable by that point, and that they took the Bezos money off the table. I.e. It wasn’t invested into the business.
hermitcrab 6y ago
Being independent isn't a binary yes/no thing. But people who built their business from their own savings are a lot more independent than people who took investment, whatever the source.
Ididntdothis 6y ago
"Indie" has been marketed into meaninglessness like "Agile", "Hacker" or "Mindfulness". These terms usually lose their meaning once they go mainstream and become cool.
juped 6y ago
If you have minority shareholders, you're not really independent. If you debt finance, you're still independent, IMO.
DizzyDoo 6y ago
I've been a full-time 'indie' computer game developer for about five years now and in the gamedev space 'indie' hasn't really meant any one thing for most of the last decade. I'm a solo guy who does art & animation, programming, writing, marketing, and so on (I have an accountant and I contracts a friend who helps with the music), working on original IP, with no outside inventment, self-publishing - which is about as 'indie' as it gets, I suppose. However, 'indie' is often applied to teams of 20+ people, sometimes either with outside investment, or who work with publishing companies. Lots of publishers are 'indie publishers' too, operations are built to work with smaller teams and budgets. And I'm totally fine with all of that! Proclaiming that "I'm indier than thou" might get you some (utterly meaningless) clout with... well, I don't know who. The main thing is I find encouraging is there's a number of proven ways to run a sustainable software business. And that's nice to know, because if at some point I need to or want to change how I'm doing things, it isn't a one-size-fits-all scenario.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Trasmatta 6y ago
  How is your game coming along? I've always wanted to make a game (like probably 50% of developers). It's just so much work I can never manage to commit to it long enough to make something.
  - DizzyDoo 6y ago
    It's coming along fine, thanks for asking! (For reference, it's here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zookeeper/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zooke...) I've been working on this one for multiple years now, commitment and the art of Finishing Things is perhaps more important than any individual skill-set like programming. Obviously individual skill-sets are important, but you could be the greatest at everything and it's not worth very much if you're _also_ very good at giving up.. In my experience, the first 10% of working on a game is great fun because you're trying different things out, experimenting! And then you have to finish the thing - and getting a decent product to market is a hard slog whether it is a video game or not. Simple advice to anyone interested in making games - make something small and simple in a single weekend, a snake clone or something, and then go from there.
buboard 6y ago
It's like music
kumarm 6y ago
Indie Hackers has been a great resource for a long time and filled a need. Hope in search for growth, IH doesn't lose its soul.
GoatOfAplomb 6y ago
When I depended on poker for my income, I always thought one should work up to the next higher-stake game by building a bankroll at one's current level. People who moved up in betting limits via someone else's money rarely survived there (the level of play tends to increase with higher stakes). I see a fair amount of discussion about the "what is indie" angle here, but I most appreciated this article for pointing out various funding options that do not carry hyper-growth expectations. I suppose taking any money at all violates the rules of my previous paragraph, but it still seems closer in spirit than traditional VC. I don't know that I'll ever attempt to start a business again, but if I did, I would certainly look more into those options.

67 points by ojosilva 6y ago

> Jason Fried of Basecamp ... who'd somehow found a way to make millions of dollars building SaaS apps without raising any funding. It's a common misconception to think that Basecamp never took any investment but in fact they did from Jeff Bezos. https://signalvnoise.com/archives2/bezos_expeditions_invests_in_37signals.php https://signalvnoise.com/archives2/bezos_expeditions_invests... That said, it helps prove the OP point that's it's possible to raise funds and remain independent.

whitepoplar 6y ago
They were already profitable at the time they took Bezos' money. DHH has stated previously that it was simply to take some money off the table.
- soneca 6y ago
  It isn’t less ”funding” because of that. I am pretty sure that having the reassurance of this investment helped with the long term mindset that led Basecamp to be such a big company.
  - Ididntdothis 6y ago
    It is less funding. They didn't need the money. Maybe you also want to call profits "funding" because they help with the mindset of building a company.
soneca 6y ago
It also at the same time is one less successful example of someone finding a way to make millions of dollars without raising any funding. Every time I see someone using Basecamp as inspiration for bootstrappers I perceive it as very dishonest. That said, I think it is a very good thing that there are more options for funding high growth tech startups that do not require a ”go unicorn or go bust” mindset of the VCs. It certainly a great innovation (even if it’s not exactly a new idea) in the startup ecosystem
- HeyLaughingBoy 6y ago
  > Every time I see someone using Basecamp as inspiration for bootstrappers I perceive it as very dishonest How far are you willing to take this? What if he had borrowed money from his grandma? What if they couldn't afford servers AND rent so they stayed with his parents? Or they couldn't get a lease on their own, so a friend co-signed? The reality is that we all accept some form of help with our businesses at one point or another that takes some of our stress away. You'd be searching long and hard to find people who became successful with no form of investment at all. And even if you did, what would that prove?
  - soneca 6y ago
    It proves nothing to you, I draw the lines of my perceptions to my own benefit. I believe every bootstrapper has some kind of self-funding. So whenever I see a story of a successful bootstrapper, I assume self-funding, and I don't consider it dishonest in my perception of the story. If the bootstrapper happens to be a millionaire already, and the "self-funding" is in the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars, I don't consider the inspiration applicable to my own case, but I would probably not call it "dishonest". All of your small-money examples look to me as in this category as both honest and applicable to my case. One of the lines that I draw is that calling "bootstrapper" a company that received, let's say $100,000, from a billionaire in order to help with growth is dishonest in my perception. From the tone of your comment, you seem to have the impression that I am a purist of some sort about the technical definition of "bootstrapper" and that I am policing how other people use it as some sort of crusade. You are wrong. I was sharing the filter that I use when interpreting this kind of story. I create these filters because I am a wanna-be founder myself, and I have decisions to make, decisions that are influenced by what I read about what happened to other people. I have to establish a gross probability of success with each decision. Deciding to pursue funding is one of those decisions. So when I read about bootstrappers I try to filter as honest or dishonest (also along other dimensions, as applicability). So this search of mine of what I consider honest or not would prove nothing to you or to anyone. I don't care. It is not the reason I do it.
    - 6y ago
new_here 6y ago
According to this article by DHH they were profitable before taking money: https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-day-i-became-a-millionaire/ https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-day-i-became-a-millionaire/ > Then in 2006, it suddenly happened from one day to the next. Jeff Bezos had taken an interest in Basecamp, and Jason and I each sold him a minority, no-control stake of our share of the company for a few million dollars each (Basecamp had been self-funded and profitable from the start, so didn’t need any capital for the venture).
agd 6y ago
DHH has stated that they were already profitable by that point, and that they took the Bezos money off the table. I.e. It wasn’t invested into the business.

hermitcrab 6y ago

Being independent isn't a binary yes/no thing. But people who built their business from their own savings are a lot more independent than people who took investment, whatever the source.

Ididntdothis 6y ago

"Indie" has been marketed into meaninglessness like "Agile", "Hacker" or "Mindfulness". These terms usually lose their meaning once they go mainstream and become cool.

juped 6y ago

If you have minority shareholders, you're not really independent. If you debt finance, you're still independent, IMO.

DizzyDoo 6y ago

I've been a full-time 'indie' computer game developer for about five years now and in the gamedev space 'indie' hasn't really meant any one thing for most of the last decade. I'm a solo guy who does art & animation, programming, writing, marketing, and so on (I have an accountant and I contracts a friend who helps with the music), working on original IP, with no outside inventment, self-publishing - which is about as 'indie' as it gets, I suppose. However, 'indie' is often applied to teams of 20+ people, sometimes either with outside investment, or who work with publishing companies. Lots of publishers are 'indie publishers' too, operations are built to work with smaller teams and budgets. And I'm totally fine with all of that! Proclaiming that "I'm indier than thou" might get you some (utterly meaningless) clout with... well, I don't know who. The main thing is I find encouraging is there's a number of proven ways to run a sustainable software business. And that's nice to know, because if at some point I need to or want to change how I'm doing things, it isn't a one-size-fits-all scenario.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Trasmatta 6y ago
How is your game coming along? I've always wanted to make a game (like probably 50% of developers). It's just so much work I can never manage to commit to it long enough to make something.
- DizzyDoo 6y ago
  It's coming along fine, thanks for asking! (For reference, it's here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zookeeper/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/654960/The_Eldritch_Zooke...) I've been working on this one for multiple years now, commitment and the art of Finishing Things is perhaps more important than any individual skill-set like programming. Obviously individual skill-sets are important, but you could be the greatest at everything and it's not worth very much if you're _also_ very good at giving up.. In my experience, the first 10% of working on a game is great fun because you're trying different things out, experimenting! And then you have to finish the thing - and getting a decent product to market is a hard slog whether it is a video game or not. Simple advice to anyone interested in making games - make something small and simple in a single weekend, a snake clone or something, and then go from there.

buboard 6y ago

It's like music

kumarm 6y ago

Indie Hackers has been a great resource for a long time and filled a need. Hope in search for growth, IH doesn't lose its soul.

GoatOfAplomb 6y ago

When I depended on poker for my income, I always thought one should work up to the next higher-stake game by building a bankroll at one's current level. People who moved up in betting limits via someone else's money rarely survived there (the level of play tends to increase with higher stakes). I see a fair amount of discussion about the "what is indie" angle here, but I most appreciated this article for pointing out various funding options that do not carry hyper-growth expectations. I suppose taking any money at all violates the rules of my previous paragraph, but it still seems closer in spirit than traditional VC. I don't know that I'll ever attempt to start a business again, but if I did, I would certainly look more into those options.