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Starting and Sustaining
- bdunn 14y agoThis is the first book in a very, very long time that I've really looked forward to. Garrett's successfully bootstrapped a SaaS that now sustains him and his family, and he's taken everything he's learned over the last few years and condensed it into a 50k word guidebook. I read an early draft and was blown away. And the spreadsheet it comes with is easily worth the sticker price (and then some.)
- cristianpascu 14y agoI looked forward to this book. Here's what puts me off for now. One price option only. I want to read the book. I'm not the interested in the spreadsheets and other stuff. Am I gonna pay $79USD for a book? No. Table of content is missing. I don't really know what's inside. Makes me nervous. The money back guarantee is not that appealing although it should set some of the stress aside. Hopefully these will be fixed quickly.
- garrettdimon 14y agoThanks for the feedback. I'm sorry to hear that you're disappointed about the price. We've considered selling the book separately, but it's all really a package deal as there are quite a few references to the spreadsheet throughout the book. Ultimately, we chose to price the book based on value. It's less about whether you're paying $79 for a book than it is about paying $79 to cut hours, days, or even weeks of pain and mistakes from the process of launching an application. As far as the money back guarantee. I stand by it, and fully plan on processing those requests immediately should any come in.
- cristianpascu 14y agoI wasn't really disappointed. I will definitely buy the book. But the first feeling was not something I expected. :)
- carsonm 14y agoGarrett has earned a solid reputation with me in how he has run Sifter. I've been a customer on-and-off, and he's always treated me fairly and promptly, even when I was "churn." I agree the price feels a little stiff, but I see his argument about the value. If confidence in the money-back guarantee is all you need to pull the trigger, I wouldn't hesitate. Note: I don't know Garrett, we're not friends, just wanted to add another voice.
- redguava 14y agoIt sounds like a perception thing. If the book was $79, or you could buy the book and the spreadsheet for $119... would you still have a problem? Evaluate it on it's own merits.
- jamesdeer 14y agoI've read a preview version of the book and it's worth at least double what he is charging for it. You'll save yourself so much money in the long run by grabbing it for $79. Work smarter :)
- quellhorst 14y agoI agree with you. I think $79 is a bit high for the book. I'd at least want to see a table of contents and a sample chapter before paying that much.
- garrettdimon 14y agoEDIT: Added a table of contents and a more obvious link to the sample chapter. Thanks! Working on adding a table of contents now. The sample chapter is available here: http://startingandsustaining.com/StartingSustainingSample.pdf http://startingandsustaining.com/StartingSustainingSample.pd... It's linked further down the page. I'll see about making it more obvious.
- dminor 14y agoFrom your free chapter, what is a "comp"?
- garrettdimon 14y agoIt's a design term. You'll generally hear people refer to "design comps" or the like. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_layout http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comprehensive_layout
- scottmagdalein 14y agoGarrett, I'm buying your book. Definitely. Question: How long did it take you to write the book and build the spreadsheets? I don't mean hours. I mean, from the day you started to the day you said "ok, done", how long was that?
- garrettdimon 14y agoThe short answer is October 25, 2012 to March 18, 2013. The spreadsheet is something that I've been fine-tuning for the last five years with Sifter. It took me a couple of days to clean it up and make it more user-friendly. The book was about 1.5 months of full-time writing and editing. But I've been working on it about half-time since October doing research and working out all of the logistics. We also hired both an illustrator for the cover and an editor to reduce the amount of effort I'd have to put in. So that probably shortened the timeline a bit.
- scottmagdalein 14y agoThat's really helpful. Thanks.
- madrobby 14y agoI'm the co-founder of a successful SaaS (http://letsfreckle.com/ http://letsfreckle.com/) and would easily have paid $300 for the spreadsheet alone. I wish I had had the spreadsheet back when we started. Garrett seriously got your back on the finances of a bootstrapped SaaS.
- omervk 14y agoIs there going to also be a Kindle (or any other e-Reader) version?
- garrettdimon 14y agoI may add one if there's incredibly high demand, but my initial attempts to create them left me with the impression that it would be a significant amount of effort for marginal additional benefit.
- omervk 14y agoIf it is available in some point in the future, would it be available for free to those who have already purchased the PDF version?
- garrettdimon 14y agoDefinitely. Unfortunately, I won't have a way to push updates, so I'd only be able to send the updated package to people that requested it.
- evolve2k 14y ago+1 kindle version
- acjohnson55 14y ago+1 for me as well on Kindle!
- tcdowney 14y agoHow long will the special launch pricing be available?
- garrettdimon 14y agoNot sure yet. I figured I'd give it two or three days to give everyone a good shot at picking it up at the lower price.
- JohnHammersley 14y agoJust bought a copy - I remember reading through the slides and thought there was a lot of good stuff there. Whilst $79 may seem a lot for a pdf and a spreadsheet, it's really very little to pay for good advice! There really is no way to learn other than to do it and make your own mistakes on the way, but having something like this to hand should help you recover quicker, and if you avoid a few pitfalls because of it, all the better :-)
- jkulmala 14y agoI just finished reading this and it's a goldmine of information. If anything, it's priced too low ;) The best part for me was the focus on bootstrapping costs and the lists of things to take into account when budgeting.