5 ms·

I'm 16 years in and have followed a similar path. I graduated college in 2004, started my business in 2005 and never took a job. Consulting has gotten me here

by nhance 5y ago

I'm 16 years in and have followed a similar path. I graduated college in 2004, started my business in 2005 and never took a job. Consulting has gotten me here and I've had up to 4 direct hires with me, but my dream has always been to run a product business. I must have attempted 3 dozen different ideas by this point. But on Friday last week, we reached our 100th subscriber. Combined with other free products, we now have over 130k daily active users which sounds more impressive than it is. The MRR is still tiny and we still rely heavily on consulting projects that have been more and more difficult to line up. It's been difficult, sometimes extraordinarily so, but we have such happy customers with huge amounts of positive feedback. It feels like this could really go somewhere. The fire still burns brightly within me though I don't know how. I'm determined not to let opportunities pass me by again. I have never shared this anywhere.

kwere 5y ago
how you bootstrapped yourself?
- vb6sp6 5y ago
  he says in the post. Consulting
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
This is an underrated path, IMO. Consulting is an excellent way to hone the non-coding skills necessary for bootstrapping a company: Scoping projects, timeline estimation, choosing tradeoffs, finishing things, selling things, presenting products to others. It's also helpful to be able to get out and talk to other businesses and people on a regular basis. Bootstrapping can be extremely lonely in a way that is hard to understand if you've only ever worked inside of companies with people to talk to.
- Msw242 5y ago
  VCs actively dissuade founders from doing professional services.
  - richardw 5y ago
    VC’s don’t want you distracted from their one shot at your next 18 months. They’d rather you go for broke and flame out rather than building a 5-year runway that allows you to slowly tune your ideas. Neither is better than the other, but one might be better for a given situation.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    Sure! If you're dumping a bunch of capital into something, you want to see that capital put to work immediately growing something to scale-- not for founders to be worried about stretching the capital by picking up nickels off the street. That is, being capital efficient is good, but being distracted by other non-core things excessively to try and conserve capital is bad. But that doesn't mean that bootstrapping with a consultancy isn't a viable path. It's only when you do it when you have capital sitting around that's not put to good use that it's a problem.
  - cameron_b 5y ago
    Because they don't want you helping near-domain competition with the application of the special sauce they just paid for. They didn't buy your app, they bought your time.
  - progre 5y ago
    I guess it's because VCs are are after the exponential growth that is possible with a hit B2C product but not realisticly possible with B2B. B2B can generate pretty solid incomes though. My previous employer had 15-20 clients, around 2M EUR yearly revenue, a solid 20% margin, with 30 employees. Fintech.
    - mlyle 5y ago
      Lots of B2B products sell into huge growing markets that leave a lot of room for a high CAGR for many years (e.g. exponential growth).
  - groar 5y ago
    Although they should not dismiss it at all as it can lead to extremely successful companies. I have Dataiku or UIPath (they did it for years) as good examples. They leveraged their existing customers to test their first product, with success.
- aabhay 5y ago
  Consulting is a great way to make money, period. A decently talented software developer can amass enough projects to overtake their salary at any desk job. However, I would not recommend using consulting income to supplement entrepreneurship nor to expose yourself to product ideas. The best product ideas come from experiencing some pain point yourself (as the "buyer") and meeting other buyers who, like you, know exactly what is painful and why. This is something that you cannot really experience as an outsider.
robocat 5y ago
I really believe in consulting if you are bootstrapping a business - the income gives you runway. However, take care to not let the consulting income misdirect your incentives (founder or business). A common trap is to chase good consulting income, and ignore the recurring SaaS income that creates a stellar business. Consulting income: 1. leads to highly variable income, 2. is often dependent on you or a few star employees, 3. creates tiny businesses that get sold for small amounts, 4. misdirects the product direction, 5. strongly misdirects the sales team if they get a commission on consulting fees. SaaS income requires discipline to chase, but often creates a business with far more long term value (yearly dividends, and market value, hopefully plus a $$$ growth rate bonus).

by nhance 5y ago

kwere 5y ago

how you bootstrapped yourself?

vb6sp6 5y ago
he says in the post. Consulting

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

This is an underrated path, IMO. Consulting is an excellent way to hone the non-coding skills necessary for bootstrapping a company: Scoping projects, timeline estimation, choosing tradeoffs, finishing things, selling things, presenting products to others. It's also helpful to be able to get out and talk to other businesses and people on a regular basis. Bootstrapping can be extremely lonely in a way that is hard to understand if you've only ever worked inside of companies with people to talk to.

Msw242 5y ago
VCs actively dissuade founders from doing professional services.
- richardw 5y ago
  VC’s don’t want you distracted from their one shot at your next 18 months. They’d rather you go for broke and flame out rather than building a 5-year runway that allows you to slowly tune your ideas. Neither is better than the other, but one might be better for a given situation.
- mlyle 5y ago
  Sure! If you're dumping a bunch of capital into something, you want to see that capital put to work immediately growing something to scale-- not for founders to be worried about stretching the capital by picking up nickels off the street. That is, being capital efficient is good, but being distracted by other non-core things excessively to try and conserve capital is bad. But that doesn't mean that bootstrapping with a consultancy isn't a viable path. It's only when you do it when you have capital sitting around that's not put to good use that it's a problem.
- cameron_b 5y ago
  Because they don't want you helping near-domain competition with the application of the special sauce they just paid for. They didn't buy your app, they bought your time.
- progre 5y ago
  I guess it's because VCs are are after the exponential growth that is possible with a hit B2C product but not realisticly possible with B2B. B2B can generate pretty solid incomes though. My previous employer had 15-20 clients, around 2M EUR yearly revenue, a solid 20% margin, with 30 employees. Fintech.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    Lots of B2B products sell into huge growing markets that leave a lot of room for a high CAGR for many years (e.g. exponential growth).
- groar 5y ago
  Although they should not dismiss it at all as it can lead to extremely successful companies. I have Dataiku or UIPath (they did it for years) as good examples. They leveraged their existing customers to test their first product, with success.
aabhay 5y ago
Consulting is a great way to make money, period. A decently talented software developer can amass enough projects to overtake their salary at any desk job. However, I would not recommend using consulting income to supplement entrepreneurship nor to expose yourself to product ideas. The best product ideas come from experiencing some pain point yourself (as the "buyer") and meeting other buyers who, like you, know exactly what is painful and why. This is something that you cannot really experience as an outsider.

robocat 5y ago

I really believe in consulting if you are bootstrapping a business - the income gives you runway. However, take care to not let the consulting income misdirect your incentives (founder or business). A common trap is to chase good consulting income, and ignore the recurring SaaS income that creates a stellar business. Consulting income: 1. leads to highly variable income, 2. is often dependent on you or a few star employees, 3. creates tiny businesses that get sold for small amounts, 4. misdirects the product direction, 5. strongly misdirects the sales team if they get a commission on consulting fees. SaaS income requires discipline to chase, but often creates a business with far more long term value (yearly dividends, and market value, hopefully plus a $$$ growth rate bonus).