Start Small, Stay Small
Start Small, Stay Small is a step-by-step guide to launching a self-funded startup. If you're a desktop, mobile or web developer, this book is your blueprint to getting your startup off the ground with no outside investment.This book intentionally avoids topics restricted to venture-backed startups such as: honing your investment pitch, securing funding, and figuring out how to use the piles of cash investors keep placing in your lap.This book assumes: You don't have $6M of investor funds sitting in your bank account You're not going to relocate to the handful of startup hubs in the world You're not going to work 70 hour weeks for low pay with the hope of someday making millions from stock options There's nothing wrong with pursuing venture funding and attempting to grow fast like Amazon, Google, Twitter, and Facebook. It just so happened that most people are not in a place to do this.Start Small, Stay Small also focuses on the single most important element of a startup that most developers avoid: marketing. There are many great resources for learning how to write code, organize source control, or connect to a database. This book does not cover the technical aspects developers already know or can learn elsewhere. It focuses on finding your idea, testing it before you build, and getting it into the hands of your customers.
Stats for nerds
98recommend
198mentions
129people
2010–2026years
77% recommend22% neutral1% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Technically last year, but less than 365 days ago:
* The Mom Test
* The SAAS Playbook
Actually in this year, the ones I remember the most:
* Start Small, Stay Small
* From Yao To Mao (more a series of lectures on chinese history)
The most recent one I haven't finished yet but was surprised I liked:
* Software Engeineering at Google
Many more things described ring true or feel desireable, and I recognize too many of the anti-patterns from companies I worked for. Although, I also recognized the good things people were doing and started to appreciate them more.
- We’re in the AI era, where one developer can ship products faster than entire teams could a few years ago.
Real world example: Six-month-old, solo-owned vibe coder Base44 sells to Wix for $80M cash - https://lnkd.in/ggJUkSGn
That’s why I picked up the classic: Start Small, Stay Small by Rob Walling
It’s packed with mindset shifts and strategy every dev-turned-founder should know, but not everyone has time to read it cover to cover.
So I summarized it. I created a color-coded PDF with the most useful takeaways, uploaded to a GitHub repo so others can benefit too: Critical Concepts Actionable Advice Mindset Shifts to Think Like a Founder
This book helped me connect the dots between code and customers, and I hope the notes help you too
- > I’m using AI to assist me and I’m building an app
Vibe coding is a myth, it will take you only so far and will require manual fixes and refactoring before MVP. Learn the basics of and keep learning, say, Swift. https://developer.apple.com/swift-playground/
> Should I actually use a completely blank iPhone for this instead?
Does not make any difference. Every app runs in its own separate environment. Only iOS device "Language and Region" settings affect all apps on a device.
> should I use a more updated version of the iPhone?
Does not make much difference, unless you need to target some new capabilities introduced with a particular iOS version. Other than that, the rest of the API is the same across multiple recent iOS versions.
> Should I just run a simulator on my actual computer
Sure. It is easier and faster to test on a Simulator using a mouse rather than on a device, tapping. Once you stabilize some code under the Simulator, always re-test it on a real device.
> I don’t want to share my idea with others
This will come as a shock, but ideas themselves are nearly worthless. There has been a previous Facebook, a previous Twitter, a previous Office, etc. that has failed. It is only the quality of execution of an idea, the quality of the Product-Market-Fit and the quality of marketing of a product that makes a product a winner. Start by reading books by Rob Walling, e.g., "Start Small, Stay Small".
- > I don't have long work hours. I receive a good salary.
Perhaps consider creating your own product as a "micropreneur": a mobile app, a SaaS service, a social media website, etc. Evenings/weekends at first, using your salary money for dev outsourcing and marketing. This kind of endeavor will feel very personal in the context of "ownership" and very hands-on in every respect. Make sure to read a couple of Product-Market-Fit books first (e.g., "Start Small, Stay Small" by Rob Walling), if you are not already familiar with the subject of business development.
- Thanks for reading!
>Now that you've been through this process, how would you go about finding a buyer yourself?
It would have been tough to find a buyer. Before I met Quiet Light, I was worried a broker wouldn't take me, and I'd have to find a buyer myself. So my plan was to (in order) start more loudly telling other founders that I'm looking for a buyer, reach out to more adjacent companies pitching them on a strategic acquisition, discuss on my blog that I'm looking for a buyer, and if all else fails, put up a banner on the store website saying the company is for sale. The problem was that the more loudly I advertise the company is for sale, the more obvious it is to buyers that I'm desperate to sell. It also risks spooking customers who might not want to buy hardware from a company whose ownership is about to change.
>Also, are there any resources you found valuable for starting your business?
Minute for minute, the best resource I've found is Jason Cohen's talk, "Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business."[0, 1] The key insight for me is that bootstrapped businesses have very different strengths and weaknesses than a VC-backed startup, so you should pick a business that plays to those strengths.
I also enjoyed Start Small, Stay Small by Rob Walling [2] and The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick[3]. The tl; dr from those is that you need to avoid the trap of building something for months and then looking around for customers once it's done. You instead should flip it and talk to customers before you even start and find out what they need.
It's not a book or resource, but one of the most valuable things I did and wish I did it earlier was create a course. It's a very condensed version of the experience of bootstrapping a business because you need to identify a need, create a product that fills the need, then market it to customers. And you don't have to be the world expert on anything, you just need to know enough to get someone who's at level N to level N + 1 and who likes the way you explain things. And you can pick a small topic and create a course with 30-100 hours of work.
I spent 60 hours on my first course, and it made $10k, so it's not like a smash hit, but it's the highest ROI thing financially I've done since quitting Google.
>How did you go about hiring your first employee and setting everything up for them as employees?
In the first few months, I was assembling all the devices, packing boxes, and printing out instruction sheets myself. It wasn't sustainable because I was also trying to write code and do customer support. It was during COVID and my wife and I were quarantining strictly, but she also was looking for a job since she was in grad school, so she was employee #1.
We started with just Google Docs. I'd write things and share them with her, and she'd ask questions or make updates.
My next hires were developers, which was a pretty dumb decision because it's the most expensive role, and it's the job I like doing most myself. I was finding that I didn't have time to advance the product because customer support was taking too much time, so I should have hired a customer support person. But I hired devs because I'd hired devs before and worked with a lot of devs, so it was a role I felt comfortable hiring. For that, I tried to add lots of automated checks on Github and document things there. I also wrote guidelines on my blog that became official guidelines for devs within the company.[4]
We moved into an office in early 2021, and at that point, I had to hire real W-2 employees rather than contractors. For that I used JustWorks, which I hated. I switched to Gusto, and they were poor but not terrible. In the future, I'm going to avoid creating a business that needs W-2 employees because in the US, it's just set up so badly for small businesses to manage the paperwork around it.
As we were moving into the office, we also switched from Google Docs to Notion, and I had a good experience with Notion. It's set up well for internal documentation, and it's user friendly, so it's easy for everyone to do basic searching and editing.
I could go on and on about hiring, but those are the biggest things that come to mind.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otbnC2zE2rw
[1] https://mtlynch.io/notes/designing-the-ideal-bootstrapped-bu...
[2] https://mtlynch.io/book-reports/start-small-stay-small/
- Understand that being a successful solopreneurs (or entrepreneur for that matter) isn't just about "coding a thing." When I started educating myself about how to be a solopreneur, I realized that I'd be lucky if I spent 50% of my time coding; and would more likely spend 1/3rd of my time coding.
A couple of things to consider:
- Business is more about execution than being the first to market with an idea. Marketing, customer satisfaction, pricing, reliability, ect, all come into play. Before you create, spend time looking at the "dozens of other solutions doing the same thing." You may find a weakness, unfulfilled need, niche, ect. Often times, in early markets with lots of players, the first movers have a lot of baggage that holds them back from growing.
(IE, the first movers made a lot of false starts and end up with Frankenstien products. You can "bypass" them by better understanding the market and building something with less functionality, but just enough functionality to meet most of the market's needs. This is a huge advantage because you aren't wasting time fixing a feature that only 2-3 people use, or making sure you don't break that one feature that 2 people use.)
- Look at books like "The Incredible Secret Money Machine" by Don Lancaster or "Start Small, Stay Small" by Rob Walling.
- Read through (and watch) a lot of YC material about starting a business. Although it isn't focused on solopreneurs, a lot of the concepts are very similar.
Me: I realized that I enjoy joining a company early and turning the MVP into an industrial-strength product.
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