This is a great list. I’m taking over a bootstrapped family business, and a lot of what you wrote echos the founders’ (my parents) sentiment. > 2. Do not think

This is a great list. I’m taking over a bootstrapped family business, and a lot of what you wrote echos the founders’ (my parents) sentiment. > 2. Do not think you/your product/your team/your approach are any different or unique I have a hard time struggling with this, especially as I’m trying to SaaSify the business and see a never-ending list of competitors and substitutes out there. Maybe that’s being too product focused, but I’m curious to see how you got past this. I think there’s non-product aspects to consider (support, pricing, etc.) > 6. Do not be afraid to charge > 8. Only those who pay you money have to decide which features to add These two are so true, and my parents say this all the time. So many prospective/existing clients express interest in a particular feature, only to never follow through with committing to contracts or paying anything. They usually come with the excuse of one of the three buckets: -The product should’ve had feature X to begin with -They’re willing to be a guinea pig to beta test feature X in exchange for the whole product to be free (not a discounted price) since without feature X it’s a dealbreaker -They can’t afford the price and we’re charging too much For the latter, we’ve done price analyses across similar products online and found that our price points are competitive, so we can (usually, if the salespeople of our company have backbone) push back. It reminds me of telling artists and graphic designers to do work “for exposure”, to which I really want to reply with the Goodfellas reference of “fuck you, pay me”. > 9. Carefully choose co-founders Corollary: NEVER choose your spouse or family members as co-founders. I can’t speak about friends as I don’t have personal experience, but the personal and professional get really intertwined even if both sides try to set boundaries. My parents and I still get along fine, but I just don’t like having the burden of mixing professional and personal. > 11. Things that no one actually cares about at the beginning In my experience (which is very likely wildly different), I find the logo and the founders’ background to be important. With our clients I’ve found that I had to name drop a couple times on my background (ex-FAANG) or pull the nepotism card several times to close a deal or reassure a client. A new logo and a new UI also gives a great first impression to our existing clients who’ve seen a 90s style UI.