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ericmcerHNSource author
Business & incomeExperience excerpt · English

The reality is super bleak

The reality is super bleak. Listen to the Indiehackers podcast and you will see that most of the 'crazy success' stories involve someone getting lucky and ending up with $10k/mo, that is a low junior dev salary at a FAANG. The most recent episode featured a guy who was an expert at building and selling Shopify apps. He built 10 different apps, but 97% of his revenue was coming from 1 of them. Even in his own special niche he had a 10% success rate. It was something like the 4th product he had launched also, so it wasn't the product of lessons learned. I don't want to make it sound bleak because everyone should experience building something from scratch (I have tried and still dabble) but it is really a tough game.

Original discussionMy Fifth Year as a Bootstrapped Founder161 source comments · at import
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moorgHN

Five years in, no salary, and not enough earnings to pay for basic living expenses? That sheds a pretty poor light on venturing out on one's own. The author seems like a pretty bright person, and the About Me page lists an ivy league education and some prior work experience. What prospects, then, would someone from a more humble background have? Or is the point of the "bootstrapped experiment" not to earn a basic living? The media paints entrepreneuship as a high calling and "founders" are seen as stars of the show, but is the reality much bleaker?

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bdcravensHN

Every person's situation is unique, but less money can be equivalent given the tangible costs (transportation, food, clothing, etc) and intangible (stresses of any particular jobs like meetings, hours, etc)

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inglor_czHN

If you attain relative independence at 10 K per month, it might be worth it. Personally, I am a very independence-minded person and I am not sure what offer would I have to receive in order to drop my current business (with a lot of small customers, so not a single chokepoint) and become a cog in some big wheelhouse. Experience of my peers (I am soon to be 45) says that big wheelhouses can sometimes collapse with alarming speed and once you get used to the putative safety, the aftereffects can break your family, your mind (one guy I knew really fell into a bad alcohol habit after being let go from a bank) etc.

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maxileviHN

I think 10k/month from a product and 10k/month from FAANG have a vastly different value quality of life wise

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l2silverHN

Just went and listened, and sure enough the first episode was on point. Justin Welsh. Smart guy, but he does attribute a lot of his success to being one of the first people to create posts specifically for linkedin, which allowed him to acquire an audience of about 20k very quickly.

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PM_me_your_mathHN

1 out of 10 sounds about right. Especially if you're taking a shot in the dark and/or not competing in an established market. Truth be told, it is tough, but its not the path of least resistance, so there's nothing else to expect. It is easier to push through if you have thick skin. If you have grit, you can iterate through projects quickly and find the one that connects with a market. The trap is falling in love with your idea without first proving it can generate revenue. I know guys who have poured tens of thousands of dollars into SAAS, only to discover after-the-fact that nobody wants to buy it.

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majaniHN

Furthermore it's very few businesses that make it past 20 years and it's very hard to transition from one business to another. I am now in that tight spot as a successful businessman in year 14

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