Bootstrapping Your Company - A practical guide by Greg Gianforte, founder of RightNow Technologies [MP3]
Published in 2007, this chronicle by @reitzensteinm 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 ★ 7 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 7 comments
don't know if this particular speech applies so much to consumer-facing internet companies-- his first mantra is "sales comes first", and he tells the story of how he sold a bunch of software before the product even existed.
Some of the other principles, though, such as not spending more than comes in, first things first (keeping the cash flow coming), etc, are more universal.
the quiz at the end is funny, too.
See also The Bootstrapper's Bible by Seth Godin. Seth has a much better explanation of the benefits of bootstrapping than anything else I've seen. The eBook version is only three bucks on Amazon too.
in the future, submitters please post mp3 warning... though a domain indicator would have worked in this case. pg?