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Ask HN: What are your recommended reads for bootstrapping a business?

39 points by mind-blight ↗ HN
My own startup experience is primarily in VC-backed startups. I'm starting to believe that there's a whole class of problems that can't be tackled using that standard startup playbook of targeting unicorns with succeeding rounds of capital. But, I'm pretty ignorant of bootstrapping.

What books, articles, forums, discord servers etc. would you recommend for how to bootstrap a business? I'm personally more interested in the business side, but I'm curious about anything the community respects and finds valuable.

29 comments

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wyem
Here are my fav resources:

Micro SaaS Ideas - https://microsaasidea.com - Newsletter (basic is free) + community (pro) for bootstrapped/solo founders. The content is superb - research backed insights & analysis.

Book: http://zerotofounder.co - covers both tech & marketing side. Author himself has successfully bootstrapped as a solo founder.

didgetmaster
Since every startup is different, I don't know how universal any advice might be. If you are not financially wealthy, be prepared for a long haul if your project is non-trivial. Without significant resources, you have to do everything yourself and revenues could be years away.

Not being able to quit your day job and devote all your time to it can push the schedule back significantly.

Sometimes, you can convince others to join you for a while without pay (only promises of equity), but unless they are 'all in', they generally fall away pretty fast.

mind-blight
Yeah, I've started one company and spent over a year funneling my own money into it. I learned a lot of expensive lessons that can be summed up as "a product isn't a company". That was 5 years ago, and I'm starting to feel the itch again. I want to be much better prepared than last time if I choose to take the leap.
JohnFen
I've read a huge pile of books on this topic, but there's only one that I actually found worth reading. As a bonus, it's short.

The Incredible Secret Money Machine, by Don Lancaster.

It's short, easy to read and understand, and when I look back on all of the various business mistakes I've made over the decades, for every one I can find a place in that book where he warned about it.

mind-blight
That looks really interesting. Some of the reviews seem to complain about it being dated. Did you find that to be true?
JohnFen
The original is very old and out of print. But he produced an updated version, The Incredible Secret Money Machine II.

The original is only dated in the specific mechanisms he talks about in terms of getting licenses and such. And he wrote it before the internet existed. The principles are timeless, though. You can ignore the dated stuff.

The one caveat to the book is that he's talking about making a sole proprietorship, not a SV style startup. But the basic principles he talks about hold true for most forms of business.

mind-blight
Perfect, just ordered it. I'm not married to an SV-style company, thought I do like the idea of applying a lot of those lessons to other niches. I think part of where I struggle is that my experience is mostly at SV companies, so having a radically different perspective will be really helpful.

Thanks for the recommendation!

quickthrower2
Quite amazing:

> hypermedia- This is simply information you can nonlinearly access six ways from Sunday. Apple's Hypercard and Roger Wagner's HyperStudlo are typical products. The model is a room full of Rolodex cards which can contain words, pictures, sound, or activities such as phone dialing or animation. While especially useful for training and educational stuff, hypermedia represents a fundamental change in how we communicate.

> Of the thousands of people in the audience, at the most only five realized they were now witnessing a once-in-a-lifetlme performance involving the absolute mastery of a very difficult musical instrument. To nearly everyone else, It sounded like a bunch of god-awful squawks. Always play for those five. - Don

jshawl
The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81948.The_E_Myth_Revisit...

Changed the way I think about being an independent contributor vs an entrepreneur.

solarmist
Changed in what way?
jarednielsen
ICs work _in_ the business. Entrepreneurs work _on_ the business.
solarmist
Ah, that’s a nice way of putting it. Very true.
muzani
It's a good book, but the approach actually seems quite unsuited to bootstrapping. You'd likely end up building for scale too early.
johnthescott
"what they don't teach you in the harvard school of business", by mark mccormack, is the only book i read on "busyness".
upen946
I write about this at https://microsaasidea.com on how businesses are doing in each niche and how other can pick ideas in a given niche. It also has a boostrapping community attached.

We have about 15000 subs consuming my content.

41b696ef1113
What is the basic process for even starting a business?

I have been kicking around an idea, and have thought about building a site. Strictly an off-hours, hobby amount of effort. I think I would be lucky to recoup DO hosting fees. Given that I only expect this to be a learning experience, but still want to operate as if it were a real business - how do I begin?

martymarkenson
Step 1. Find someone to pay you

Step 2. Repeat step 1

jjeaff
Yes. This is all. Don't do any paperwork or registrations or DBAs until you are actually making money. Worry about paperwork and technicalities later.

Of course, things will be a bit different if your business has to do with something regulated and potentially dangerous like electrical work or cutting hair.

occam65
$100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau. Really good at stripping away many of the reasons I had been holding onto to not start something on my own.

The book is agnostic about how you raise capital. It gives you the pros and cons of bootstrapping or raising money, and leaves it to you to decide what's best.

akg_67
+1 along with Steve Blank, The Startup Owner's Manual.
Jugurtha
Send me an e-mail and I'll send you curated resources that were useful over the years. I can't write a thorough reply right now and there are many layers to it.

TL;DR:

A market you can reach that can buy a product you can get distributed.

It's advantageous if you enjoy interacting with the people you want to solve problems for, especially initially (many calls, emails, conversations).

The product's sale complexity (high-touch vs. low-touch or self-service, buyer-is-user vs. buyer-is-not-user but can make discretionary decisions vs. purchase signed off by a committee) will impact what you do. Continually reduce the sale complexity.

caspg
You should check out https://microconf.com and their youtube channel. They also have Slack community called "MicrConf Connect" and podcast "The Startups For the Rest of Us". Lots of good resources there.
rwalling
All of that sprang out of https://startsmall.com, which I published back in 2010. The examples are dated, but the core concepts still hold 12 years later.
rozenmd
site looks down?
slater
Got a self-signed cert error, Firefox on macOS

startsmall.com uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is not trusted because it is self-signed.

Error code: MOZILLA_PKIX_ERROR_SELF_SIGNED_CERT

mod
Yes. AND the site is down.
_448
"How to Make a Million Before Lunch" by Rachel Bridge