The Bootstrapped Founder

Today, I am talking to Daniel Vassallo, writer, founder, and person with very strong opinions. He is building a portfolio of small bets in public, on Twitter. I will talk to him about the importance of making money in diversified ways, how to structure your life around being a founder, and how to figure out which business ideas might actually work. Here is Daniel Vassallo. What is the lifetime val...

I was talking to Damon Chen, who built Testimonial.to to $400.000 in ARR this week, and at one point, he mentioned that he isn’t looking into selling his business just yet. Maybe even never. That got me thinking. While we all want to build sellable businesses, is there such a thing as selling too early? How can we determine when that phase ends and when it’s time to get acquired? Should we even do...

Today, I am talking to Damon Chen, the founder behind Testimonial.to, a social proof tool that has recently reached $400.000 in annual recurring revenue. Now that’s extremely impressive, particularly considering that Damon got it there all by himself. So, let’s just ask him how this family man accomplished such growth while living in one of the most expensive places you could build a business in....

Earlier this week, I talked to Michele Hansen of Geocodio on The Bootstrapped Founder Podcast. Michele co-founded the business with her husband and ran it as a side project for several years. Now, that's a long time to wait before you commit full-time to a project. We also learned during our conversation that there are many ways of determining when the right time is to make that leap: for me, it w...

I am talking to Michele Hansen, the co-founder of Geocodio, an indie SaaS business in the world of mapping and geolocation. I've been a fan of her work, both as a founder and as an active member of the Indie Hacker community for years now. I followed her journey with the business just as much as her foray into writing her first book, Deploy Empathy. Michelle really gets the founder community, and...

In a world where everyone talks about disruption and hustling, the concept of a calm business can seem out of place or even naive. How can you compete with people who spend 80 hours a week working in their businesses —publicly boasting about their so-called "grindset"— when you treat your fledgling business as a side project that you only work on in the evenings? For many entrepreneurs, calmness i...

For most founders, running a business is juggling hot coals while riding on a unicycle. It's a stressful occupation, requiring constant vigilance, and offers barely any downtime to recover or relax. But it doesn't have to be that way. - Operating a Calm SaaS Business - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is...

One of the biggest points of confusion for any software business is pricing. It often takes months, if not years, to find a working way to charge your customers, and even then, you'll need to adjust it over time. Pricing is never done, and often, it doesn't work. But fortunately, there are a few foundational choices you can make to keep your pricing efforts calm and manageable. Today, we'll look a...

Building a software product is both incredibly simple and excruciatingly complicated. You can build a new mind-blowingly helpful feature within hours, sometimes even minutes. But if you make the wrong technology choices, you might be rewarded with several months of additional work a few years later. Let's talk about building a product that can carry your SaaS business to success calmly and intenti...

When you're building an audience-centric and community-first business, you're delaying finding your business idea and building your product for as long as possible. First, you look into your market, validate the existence of a budget, and zero in on a critical problem to which people need a solution. And even now, we're not talking about the product yet. But we will talk about solving the problem....

- The Toxicity of Growth Hacks - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire .  You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

- Problem Discovery for Calm SaaS Businesses - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire .  You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

Arvid shares how he picks a market for a new business. - Market Analysis for Calm SaaS Businesses - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire .  You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

- On Art and Artifice - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire .  You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

- Infrastructure of a Calm SaaS Business - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by The $100 MBA Show and MicroAcquire .  You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

- Entrepreneurial Strategies & Anti-Patterns for a Calm SaaS Business - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by The $100 MBA Show and MicroAcquire .  You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

- Business Models for a Calm SaaS Business - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by The $100 MBA Show and MicroAcquire .  You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

- Fundamentals of a Calm SaaS Business - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by The $100 MBA Show and  MicroAcquire .  You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

- Fundamentals of a Calm Business - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire .  If you're thinking about selling a startup, you'll want to check out MicroAcquire . You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

- How NOT to Use Twitter DMs - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire .  If you're thinking about selling a startup, you'll want to check out MicroAcquire . You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

- Don't blame the market; blame your marketing - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire .  If you're thinking about selling a startup, you'll want to check out MicroAcquire . You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

- On Saying No - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire .  If you're thinking about selling a startup, you'll want to check out MicroAcquire . You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

- The Risks and Illusions of the "Post-Exit Retirement" - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire .  If you're thinking about selling a startup, you'll want to check out MicroAcquire . You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

- Permission to Follow Up: The Difference Between Owned & Borrowed Audiences - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire .  If you're thinking about selling a startup, you'll want to check out MicroAcquire . You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.

- Consulting in Public - Find your Following , my Twitter course — now with Find your Following Essentials, the 7-day Twitter crash course This episode is sponsored by MicroAcquire .  If you're thinking about selling a startup, you'll want to check out MicroAcquire . You can also watch this episode as a video on YouTube.