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It's so, so , so hard to walk the line between persistence (which leads to glory) and stubbornness (which leads to more time following already wasted time.) Co

It's so, so , so hard to walk the line between persistence (which leads to glory) and stubbornness (which leads to more time following already wasted time.) Congratulations for walking this line correctly. I agree that some sort of market validation is necessary to at least pretend you are on the former not the latter. Those early usage spikes are helpful reminders that there is a business here somewhere. I'll also make a note that you spent time on marketing from the early days. Writing blog posts, promoting said posts, having a Discord server, committing to answer emails, all of this is marketing and its likely lead to success more than the code. I notice whenever there was a dip in revenue, marketing (in the form of more blog posts) was the response. I suspect that was intentional, and definitely a better approach than "let me go away and silently code more features." So there are valuable lessons to others here. Congratulations not just on the current success but also on sharing the path that leads to success. Ultimately you can show the way, but you can't make people learn from it. Oh, and I like the bootstrapping approach. I did the same, and I'm not sorry. It's longer and harder but also skips an enormous amount of extra work.

scubakid 1y ago
Thanks. For a while there, it wasn't clear to me which side of the line I was walking. Something that stuck with me from Poor Charlie’s Almanack is that low expectations are a cornerstone of a happy life. I built this for myself first, so when people actually signed up and paid, it was incredibly motivating. I was thrilled to spend my free time treating those early customers like royalty and building more of what they wanted. If I had instead come into this with the expectation of quick success, I doubt I would have made it through those early years. And cheers from one bootstrapper to another. It's not easy, but I can't imagine a more rewarding way to build.
- chatmasta 1y ago
  Another lesson here: you built for a specific community who is passionate, money-motivated, and concentrates in specific social spaces (forums, reddit, etc.) where you can promote your business. This isn't always a recipe for success, but it's a damn good starting point. You need to adjust to the sensitivities of the community to avoid overly self-promotional content, but you always have a clear channel to promote your very specific product that meets their needs.
  - 8f2ab37a-ed6c 1y ago
    It’s very much what Sahil Lavingia recommends doing in The Minimalist Entrepreneur
  - cloverpari8 1y ago
    More importantly, the site looks pristine, with soft, artsy, techie, nature images with calming, strong, and welcoming colors and vibes, and and follows what at least used to be good SEO practices with a blog that is kept up to date frequently enough, etc. If you don’t know a good site, you’ll never be able to develop one or pay for one without using a ok template.
- katzgrau 1y ago
  +1 from someone who also bootstrapped a side project into a 7 figure business, and just happens to be absorbing some lessons from Poor Charlie’s Almanac on Audible recently.
  - scubakid 1y ago
    ha I listened on Audible too. great audiobook for a walk after dinner. Charlie's advice really holds up. which part have you gotten the most out of so far? also, congrats!
- speleding 1y ago
  Congrats. A word of warning: I scaled my SaaS site to $1M in AAR in a few years, but then a lot of competition appeared and a decade later it's still at only $1.5M. I have a good time running it and I can live comfortably while feeding my team, but with my initial success I had hoped it would go up further faster. So keep those expectation low, the next million may not come as easily as the first.
  - scubakid 1y ago
    Knowing what you know now, is there anything strategic you would have done differently after reaching that 1M ARR milestone?
    - speleding 1y ago
      Good question. The main problem I had was being too slow scaling up from 1 person. Building a good team is tricky, it's very hard to convince great devs to join you when you are by yourself at a time when they had a pick of jobs from FAANG. Even if you can match the salary of well funded startups, other companies can offer working with a larger team. So you have three options: 1. hire sub-par people, 2. get VC funding to hire an entire team, or 3. continue doing most stuff by yourself. I tried hiring sub-par people. That was a mistake, they took way more effort and negative energy than I got in return from the salary I paid them. I did not want to take on VC funding to be able create a large team at once, and in hindsight I think that was a good idea because several of my competitors did, and then had to fold 5 years later when they ran out of funding and their revenue was not high enough. (Also, the freedom of being a 100% owner and not having anyone tell you what to do was a major quality of life improvement for me that I never want to give up again once I tasted it. I hope you savor it as I do!) So being smarter about hiring is what I would do differently, but that's easier said than done. I think the job market today probably does have more high quality devs available that don't mind being employee number two. Edit: to add, once competitors appeared it became much more of a marketing game than a web dev game, because customers just tend to click the first three google hits. Getting good at marketing, and hiring the right people for that, is a whole other ballgame if you're a dev.
teiferer 1y ago
> It's so, so , so hard to walk the line between persistence (which leads to glory) and stubbornness (which leads to more time following already wasted time.) > Congratulations for walking this line correctly. As much as I like to agree with this message ... isn't there a big portion of luck involved here that makes the difference between the two sides of this line? In other words, aren't we seeing huge survivorship bias at play here? That's what makes the line so hard to walk. Surely skill helps, but more than most like to admit it's the unpredictability of outside forces that makes the line really hard to walk.
- nl 1y ago
  > isn't there a big portion of luck involved here that makes the difference between the two sides of this line? In other words, aren't we seeing huge survivorship bias at play here? Luck and survivorship bias may not be the same thing.
  - rthrfrd 1y ago
    Sure, but when you can’t clearly attribute the survivor’s survival, there’s still no meaningful conclusion to draw. And given how many different ways there are for businesses to succeed or fail, that are never ever repeatable due to the passing of time in the market, then I think attribution is impossible, so having the humility to somewhat attribute luck is admirable.
- K0balt 1y ago
  There is a fallacy in over application of the survivorship bias concept. Literal survival for early cultures was often a matter of luck. Agriculture was an innovation that improved the odds. Early cultures that practiced agriculture outperformed those that did not, and were more likely to survive black swan events. All major cultures in existence are now based in agriculture. Should we assume then that because we only see agrarian cultures that that is not useful information, because of survivorship bias in the resulting sample? On the contrary, survival itself is the signal that is useful… it’s really a matter of what behavior the signal can be attributed to- was it the agriculture, or was it the human sacrifices? Was it the red ochre face paint? The storing of grain in pots instead of skins? Failure bias is just as large of a red herring. It’s easy to imagine that it retrospect, we understand why failures happen, and sometimes the reasons are very clear. That’s why there is often more to be learned from failures than from successes. But still, it’s easy to look at the things they did right that successful example B also did, and then conclude those things weren’t critical to success because they sometimes end in failure. The point is that we shouldn’t judge the value of information based on ideas like “survivor bias” but instead look for more methodical and logical connections between causes and outcomes, and not fall victim to cargo-culting nor casual, hand wavey dismissal of potential lessons. Survivorship bias mitigation is a matter of determining which survivor signals are instrumental , and those which are coincidental. Many things are fraught with risk and low probabilities of success. That does not make them primarily a matter of luck. Aviation is a great example of an environment that is nearly 100 percent risk, where without knowledge and the correct tools the very small chance of not dying would be purely a matter of luck.
SenHeng 1y ago
Persistence and Stubbornness are just different words for the same personality trait. The former is used when looked at a positive light while the latter is used in the negative. You're persistent if your project succeeded but you're stubborn if you keep at it despite unfavourable outcomes.
- javcasas 1y ago
  So the difference between the two is just luck? I apply to a thousand job offers, get rejected every time => I'm stubborn. I apply for job #1001, I get the job => I'm persistent.
  - y04nn 1y ago
    I would say that you are persistent if you keep getting rejected but keep improving but using feedback and you would be stubborn if you don't change a thing while keeping being rejected.
  - SenHeng 1y ago
    Yes. You were stubborn for applying for jobs beyond you. Your persistence led you to finding that amazing job.
  - esseph 1y ago
    Got selected => lucky Would not have had a chance to be lucky if not => persistent
- scubakid 1y ago
  The way I see it, persistent founders keep looking for evidence and adapt / adjust course based on what they learn. Stubborn ones just keep going, even when there are clear signals that it's time to step back and refocus.
amelius 1y ago
> It's so, so , so hard to walk the line between persistence (which leads to glory) and stubbornness (which leads to more time following already wasted time.) Strange analogy. I'd say stay away from that line and run into the direction of persistence.
scarface_74 1y ago
> It's so, so , so hard to walk the line between persistence (which leads to glory) and stubbornness (which leads to more time following already wasted time.) “Courage is knowing it might hurt and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same thing. And that’s why life is hard.”

scubakid 1y ago

Thanks. For a while there, it wasn't clear to me which side of the line I was walking. Something that stuck with me from Poor Charlie’s Almanack is that low expectations are a cornerstone of a happy life. I built this for myself first, so when people actually signed up and paid, it was incredibly motivating. I was thrilled to spend my free time treating those early customers like royalty and building more of what they wanted. If I had instead come into this with the expectation of quick success, I doubt I would have made it through those early years. And cheers from one bootstrapper to another. It's not easy, but I can't imagine a more rewarding way to build.

chatmasta 1y ago
Another lesson here: you built for a specific community who is passionate, money-motivated, and concentrates in specific social spaces (forums, reddit, etc.) where you can promote your business. This isn't always a recipe for success, but it's a damn good starting point. You need to adjust to the sensitivities of the community to avoid overly self-promotional content, but you always have a clear channel to promote your very specific product that meets their needs.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 1y ago
  It’s very much what Sahil Lavingia recommends doing in The Minimalist Entrepreneur
- cloverpari8 1y ago
  More importantly, the site looks pristine, with soft, artsy, techie, nature images with calming, strong, and welcoming colors and vibes, and and follows what at least used to be good SEO practices with a blog that is kept up to date frequently enough, etc. If you don’t know a good site, you’ll never be able to develop one or pay for one without using a ok template.
katzgrau 1y ago
+1 from someone who also bootstrapped a side project into a 7 figure business, and just happens to be absorbing some lessons from Poor Charlie’s Almanac on Audible recently.
- scubakid 1y ago
  ha I listened on Audible too. great audiobook for a walk after dinner. Charlie's advice really holds up. which part have you gotten the most out of so far? also, congrats!
speleding 1y ago
Congrats. A word of warning: I scaled my SaaS site to $1M in AAR in a few years, but then a lot of competition appeared and a decade later it's still at only $1.5M. I have a good time running it and I can live comfortably while feeding my team, but with my initial success I had hoped it would go up further faster. So keep those expectation low, the next million may not come as easily as the first.
- scubakid 1y ago
  Knowing what you know now, is there anything strategic you would have done differently after reaching that 1M ARR milestone?
  - speleding 1y ago
    Good question. The main problem I had was being too slow scaling up from 1 person. Building a good team is tricky, it's very hard to convince great devs to join you when you are by yourself at a time when they had a pick of jobs from FAANG. Even if you can match the salary of well funded startups, other companies can offer working with a larger team. So you have three options: 1. hire sub-par people, 2. get VC funding to hire an entire team, or 3. continue doing most stuff by yourself. I tried hiring sub-par people. That was a mistake, they took way more effort and negative energy than I got in return from the salary I paid them. I did not want to take on VC funding to be able create a large team at once, and in hindsight I think that was a good idea because several of my competitors did, and then had to fold 5 years later when they ran out of funding and their revenue was not high enough. (Also, the freedom of being a 100% owner and not having anyone tell you what to do was a major quality of life improvement for me that I never want to give up again once I tasted it. I hope you savor it as I do!) So being smarter about hiring is what I would do differently, but that's easier said than done. I think the job market today probably does have more high quality devs available that don't mind being employee number two. Edit: to add, once competitors appeared it became much more of a marketing game than a web dev game, because customers just tend to click the first three google hits. Getting good at marketing, and hiring the right people for that, is a whole other ballgame if you're a dev.

teiferer 1y ago

> It's so, so , so hard to walk the line between persistence (which leads to glory) and stubbornness (which leads to more time following already wasted time.) > Congratulations for walking this line correctly. As much as I like to agree with this message ... isn't there a big portion of luck involved here that makes the difference between the two sides of this line? In other words, aren't we seeing huge survivorship bias at play here? That's what makes the line so hard to walk. Surely skill helps, but more than most like to admit it's the unpredictability of outside forces that makes the line really hard to walk.

nl 1y ago
> isn't there a big portion of luck involved here that makes the difference between the two sides of this line? In other words, aren't we seeing huge survivorship bias at play here? Luck and survivorship bias may not be the same thing.
- rthrfrd 1y ago
  Sure, but when you can’t clearly attribute the survivor’s survival, there’s still no meaningful conclusion to draw. And given how many different ways there are for businesses to succeed or fail, that are never ever repeatable due to the passing of time in the market, then I think attribution is impossible, so having the humility to somewhat attribute luck is admirable.
K0balt 1y ago
There is a fallacy in over application of the survivorship bias concept. Literal survival for early cultures was often a matter of luck. Agriculture was an innovation that improved the odds. Early cultures that practiced agriculture outperformed those that did not, and were more likely to survive black swan events. All major cultures in existence are now based in agriculture. Should we assume then that because we only see agrarian cultures that that is not useful information, because of survivorship bias in the resulting sample? On the contrary, survival itself is the signal that is useful… it’s really a matter of what behavior the signal can be attributed to- was it the agriculture, or was it the human sacrifices? Was it the red ochre face paint? The storing of grain in pots instead of skins? Failure bias is just as large of a red herring. It’s easy to imagine that it retrospect, we understand why failures happen, and sometimes the reasons are very clear. That’s why there is often more to be learned from failures than from successes. But still, it’s easy to look at the things they did right that successful example B also did, and then conclude those things weren’t critical to success because they sometimes end in failure. The point is that we shouldn’t judge the value of information based on ideas like “survivor bias” but instead look for more methodical and logical connections between causes and outcomes, and not fall victim to cargo-culting nor casual, hand wavey dismissal of potential lessons. Survivorship bias mitigation is a matter of determining which survivor signals are instrumental , and those which are coincidental. Many things are fraught with risk and low probabilities of success. That does not make them primarily a matter of luck. Aviation is a great example of an environment that is nearly 100 percent risk, where without knowledge and the correct tools the very small chance of not dying would be purely a matter of luck.

SenHeng 1y ago

Persistence and Stubbornness are just different words for the same personality trait. The former is used when looked at a positive light while the latter is used in the negative. You're persistent if your project succeeded but you're stubborn if you keep at it despite unfavourable outcomes.

javcasas 1y ago
So the difference between the two is just luck? I apply to a thousand job offers, get rejected every time => I'm stubborn. I apply for job #1001, I get the job => I'm persistent.
- y04nn 1y ago
  I would say that you are persistent if you keep getting rejected but keep improving but using feedback and you would be stubborn if you don't change a thing while keeping being rejected.
- SenHeng 1y ago
  Yes. You were stubborn for applying for jobs beyond you. Your persistence led you to finding that amazing job.
- esseph 1y ago
  Got selected => lucky Would not have had a chance to be lucky if not => persistent
scubakid 1y ago
The way I see it, persistent founders keep looking for evidence and adapt / adjust course based on what they learn. Stubborn ones just keep going, even when there are clear signals that it's time to step back and refocus.

amelius 1y ago

> It's so, so , so hard to walk the line between persistence (which leads to glory) and stubbornness (which leads to more time following already wasted time.) Strange analogy. I'd say stay away from that line and run into the direction of persistence.

scarface_74 1y ago

> It's so, so , so hard to walk the line between persistence (which leads to glory) and stubbornness (which leads to more time following already wasted time.) “Courage is knowing it might hurt and doing it anyway. Stupidity is the same thing. And that’s why life is hard.”