The Perils of Bootstrapping via Consulting | My Experience
Published in 2011, this chronicle by @skevvis 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 1 comments
I would try and look at consulting and your business as two separate things/projects. Consulting is consulting and product development is product development.
The way I've tried to manage it is my day job is my day job and building products is what I do at night or in my spare time. It takes longer but there is a clean separation and it forces you to focus on the most important stuff and less busy work.