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Ask HN: What are your recommended reads for bootstrapping a business?
My own startup experience is primarily in VC-backed startups. I'm starting to believe that there's a whole class of problems that can't be tackled using that standard startup playbook of targeting unicorns with succeeding rounds of capital. But, I'm pretty ignorant of bootstrapping.
What books, articles, forums, discord servers etc. would you recommend for how to bootstrap a business? I'm personally more interested in the business side, but I'm curious about anything the community respects and finds valuable.
- enonevets 4y agoThe Mom Test would be a great book for validating ideas: https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/dp/1492180742/ https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/...
- wyem 4y agoHere are my fav resources: Micro SaaS Ideas - https://microsaasidea.com https://microsaasidea.com - Newsletter (basic is free) + community (pro) for bootstrapped/solo founders. The content is superb - research backed insights & analysis. Book: http://zerotofounder.co http://zerotofounder.co - covers both tech & marketing side. Author himself has successfully bootstrapped as a solo founder.
- didgetmaster 4y agoSince every startup is different, I don't know how universal any advice might be. If you are not financially wealthy, be prepared for a long haul if your project is non-trivial. Without significant resources, you have to do everything yourself and revenues could be years away. Not being able to quit your day job and devote all your time to it can push the schedule back significantly. Sometimes, you can convince others to join you for a while without pay (only promises of equity), but unless they are 'all in', they generally fall away pretty fast.
- mind-blight 4y agoYeah, I've started one company and spent over a year funneling my own money into it. I learned a lot of expensive lessons that can be summed up as "a product isn't a company". That was 5 years ago, and I'm starting to feel the itch again. I want to be much better prepared than last time if I choose to take the leap.
- JohnFen 4y agoI've read a huge pile of books on this topic, but there's only one that I actually found worth reading. As a bonus, it's short. The Incredible Secret Money Machine, by Don Lancaster. It's short, easy to read and understand, and when I look back on all of the various business mistakes I've made over the decades, for every one I can find a place in that book where he warned about it.
- mind-blight 4y agoThat looks really interesting. Some of the reviews seem to complain about it being dated. Did you find that to be true?
- JohnFen 4y agoThe original is very old and out of print. But he produced an updated version, The Incredible Secret Money Machine II. The original is only dated in the specific mechanisms he talks about in terms of getting licenses and such. And he wrote it before the internet existed. The principles are timeless, though. You can ignore the dated stuff. The one caveat to the book is that he's talking about making a sole proprietorship, not a SV style startup. But the basic principles he talks about hold true for most forms of business.
- mind-blight 4y agoPerfect, just ordered it. I'm not married to an SV-style company, thought I do like the idea of applying a lot of those lessons to other niches. I think part of where I struggle is that my experience is mostly at SV companies, so having a radically different perspective will be really helpful. Thanks for the recommendation!
- quickthrower2 4y agoQuite amazing: > hypermedia- This is simply information you can nonlinearly access six ways from Sunday. Apple's Hypercard and Roger Wagner's HyperStudlo are typical products. The model is a room full of Rolodex cards which can contain words, pictures, sound, or activities such as phone dialing or animation. While especially useful for training and educational stuff, hypermedia represents a fundamental change in how we communicate. > Of the thousands of people in the audience, at the most only five realized they were now witnessing a once-in-a-lifetlme performance involving the absolute mastery of a very difficult musical instrument. To nearly everyone else, It sounded like a bunch of god-awful squawks. Always play for those five. - Don
- jshawl 4y agoThe E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81948.The_E_Myth_Revisited https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81948.The_E_Myth_Revisit... Changed the way I think about being an independent contributor vs an entrepreneur.
- solarmist 4y agoChanged in what way?
- jarednielsen 4y agoICs work _in_ the business. Entrepreneurs work _on_ the business.
- solarmist 4y agoAh, that’s a nice way of putting it. Very true.
- muzani 4y agoIt's a good book, but the approach actually seems quite unsuited to bootstrapping. You'd likely end up building for scale too early.
- tshankar 4y ago* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payback_period https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payback_period * https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/payback-period https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/payback-per... * https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/paybackperiod.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/paybackperiod.asp
- johnthescott 4y ago"what they don't teach you in the harvard school of business", by mark mccormack, is the only book i read on "busyness".
- upen946 4y agoI write about this at https://microsaasidea.com https://microsaasidea.com on how businesses are doing in each niche and how other can pick ideas in a given niche. It also has a boostrapping community attached. We have about 15000 subs consuming my content.
- 41b696ef1113 4y agoWhat is the basic process for even starting a business? I have been kicking around an idea, and have thought about building a site. Strictly an off-hours, hobby amount of effort. I think I would be lucky to recoup DO hosting fees. Given that I only expect this to be a learning experience, but still want to operate as if it were a real business - how do I begin?
- martymarkenson 4y agoStep 1. Find someone to pay you Step 2. Repeat step 1
- jjeaff 4y agoYes. This is all. Don't do any paperwork or registrations or DBAs until you are actually making money. Worry about paperwork and technicalities later. Of course, things will be a bit different if your business has to do with something regulated and potentially dangerous like electrical work or cutting hair.
- occam65 4y ago$100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau. Really good at stripping away many of the reasons I had been holding onto to not start something on my own. The book is agnostic about how you raise capital. It gives you the pros and cons of bootstrapping or raising money, and leaves it to you to decide what's best.
- akg_67 4y ago+1 along with Steve Blank, The Startup Owner's Manual.
- Jugurtha 4y agoSend me an e-mail and I'll send you curated resources that were useful over the years. I can't write a thorough reply right now and there are many layers to it. TL;DR: A market you can reach that can buy a product you can get distributed. It's advantageous if you enjoy interacting with the people you want to solve problems for, especially initially (many calls, emails, conversations). The product's sale complexity (high-touch vs. low-touch or self-service, buyer-is-user vs. buyer-is-not-user but can make discretionary decisions vs. purchase signed off by a committee) will impact what you do. Continually reduce the sale complexity.
- caspg 4y agoYou should check out https://microconf.com https://microconf.com and their youtube channel. They also have Slack community called "MicrConf Connect" and podcast "The Startups For the Rest of Us". Lots of good resources there.
- rwalling 4y agoAll of that sprang out of https://startsmall.com https://startsmall.com, which I published back in 2010. The examples are dated, but the core concepts still hold 12 years later.
- _448 4y ago"How to Make a Million Before Lunch" by Rachel Bridge