Bootstrapped with 1000 paying users OR viral app with 1M non-paying users?
What would you prefer: bootstrapped with 1000 paying customers but the company may not scale to million paying customers OR a possible funded social/viral etc. app that could scale to millions of users but non-paying?
I ask and wonder because I have 2 ideas that I am struggling to lock down and one of them falls in the former category while the second one falls in the latter.
Published in 2012, this chronicle by @codegeek details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
Small, repetitive improvements in customer retention and conversion rates yield massive returns over multi-year horizons.
Community Debate Themes:
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Web 2.0 Genesis (2007–2013)
COMMUNITY SCORE ★ 4 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 5 comments
It's easier to know how you're doing when you charge money. If you have 10 paying customers you're not doing well. If you have 100k free users you probably won't know how you're doing, you may need them to some specific behavior or need larger numbers to make your thing work.
I wouldn't pick one because you think it will be easier than the other. It's safer to assume they'll both be really hard, but probably in different ways.
I'd go with the first one. You can make it scale with other ideas later on or with new products, and you'll have a solid base to work off of. The viral app idea is a crapshoot these days.
Well, with the first one you'd make money and do less tech support.