Software by Rob

I recommend you take a look at Rob Walling's blog: http://www.softwarebyrob.com/

He also runs the Microprenuer Academy that focuses on helping and promoting one-person startups. His key advice: focus on a niche industry or audience.

For example, a few years ago I had this great idea of building a task management app. I quickly discovered there were dozens of them, Asana, Producteev, Flow, Trello, etc. Using his advice, I could have focused developing a task app for a particular industry, say industrial engineers, architects, investment advisors, etc. His point being that specific industries have very specific needs, and one-size-fit-all, general purpose apps rarely targets those needs.

Bottom line, think about what kinds of app you'd enjoy building, social media, news, productivity app, game, whatever, then cross breed it with some underserved market.
Example: LinkedIn + Oil and Gas industry = oilpro.com

Yeah, this is not a good blog post. I feel like the author did some basic Google'ing for content without doing much due diligence or checking dates.

Also, I've seen Carbonmade come up in lists before [1], but I wouldn't ever list them in any current list of bootstrapped companies. Their homepage hasn't changed much in 3 years [2], their traffic appears to be headed south [3], and frankly I don't know any professional creative who uses their service for their portfolio (anecdotal I know, but I work in the industry). No offense to anyone at Carbonmade, but I think you can find much better examples of bootstrapped companies in the photo/creative world (SmugMug for example).

[1] http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2011/09/01/ten-highly-successful-bootstrapped-startups/

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20110129083114/http://carbonmade.com/

[3] http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/carbonmade.com

To both you and raphinou and others battling with the same questions, I cannot recommend Rob Walling's work enough.

His blog [0], book [1] and podcast [2] address the exact concerns any new software bootstrapper faces.

He also runs the Micropreneur Academy, but I don't have any direct experience of that.

He also organises Microconf, and I really recommend watching his talk from last year - http://www.microconf.com/videos-2012.html

The sheer number of products he has built, launched, acquired - both successes and failures - over the years gives all of his advice a lot of weight.

[0] http://www.softwarebyrob.com/

[1] http://www.startupbook.net/

[2] http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/

PS I don't have any affiliation with Rob. I'm just really grateful for all his excellent work.

Great point r2dnb. This used to be my mentality as well and it hurt me.

I was looking for a "smart" business that was "worthy" of me. How could these people spend so much time on such an indefensible & unscalable process?!

Well, the joke was on me. My brother stopped consuming info and started Amazon FBA. And he does really well (full-time job replacement). Instead of waiting for the perfect idea - he executed.

Now I'm happily off my high horse and trying to follow in his footsteps.

Lesson learned - there is no perfect business. Get started with something simple and build from there.

Great article on this incremental approach for anyone interested: http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approach-to-bootstrapping/

Nathan and Amy: this is awesome. By letting us “listen in” on your dialogue the lessons in here feel genuine. Great work.

To add a little fuel to the fire, I’ll make a few comments:

> Amy: "I’ve never seen anyone do successful presales for a software product, for the record."

I guess it depends on the definition of “successful” – Jason Cohen had 40 pre-sales before he started building WPEngine: http://blog.asmartbear.com/stop-customer-interviews.html

> Amy: "I don’t know ANYONE… ANYONE… who outsourced their product and made a success out of it."

Again, it depends on your definition of “success” but I personally think Rob Walling is pretty successful, and he outsources almost all of his development: http://www.softwarebyrob.com

From what I read, Horowitz' book is very much about the typical VC fueled startup.

At this point in my life, I'm not interested in that except out of curiosity, I'd rather read books by/for/about boostrapped startups.

Where does Thiel's book fall in that range? Reading the comments, it looks like it's way more of an idea book than anything practical, and targetted at people who want to do something new and radical. Fair enough, but it looks like an entertainment read rather than anything applicable.

http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/08/05/why-startup-founders-should-stop-reading-business-books/