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Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business with Jason Cohen

Rob Walling

131K subscribers • 1 video on Hallway

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  • Recommended by 13 people: 13 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2020 to 2023.
  • Presented by Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine

Beginner. No background in the topic needed.

551K views6 years ago13 recommendations

Careers and interviewsTools and practiceStartupsInside tech companies

Jason Cohen explains how to design a bootstrapped SaaS business by working backward from your personal goals, constraints, and strengths.

Starting a business is hard enough. The last thing you need to do is set up a foundation that works against you. A better approach is to take stock of your natural advantages, disadvantages, goals and needs, and "back in" to what that has to mean about your business model, pricing, market, product, approach, advertising, etc... Watch These Next: From Idea to Billion Dollar SaaS Business with Jason Cohen: youtu.be/JleTJKIGHGg Bootstrapping VS Venture Capital - What's The Right Move?: youtube.com/watch?v=3OKVj4PA3Pk How To Start a SaaS Business with No Money: youtube.com/watch?v=huyDp-zWpxg&t=3s Presented by Jason Cohen at MicroConf 2013. Check out Jason’s MicroConf speakers page for more talks → microconf.com/speakers/jason-cohen microconf.com #microconf #microconf2013 Join our exclusive community for SaaS founders → microconfconnect.com Twitter → twitter.com/MicroConf E-mail → support@microconf.com MicroConf 2020 Headline Partners ► Stripe stripe.com Twitter → twitter.com/Stripe ► Hey hey.com Twitter → twitter.com/heyhey

Why it's here

13 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as a classic, highly actionable talk on SaaS bootstrapping, pricing tiers, and optimizing cash flow.

shooon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Have you taken on debt to fund your startup?”

…. a 30% discount that might really help the business' cash flow. Edit: if your SaaS business is the one linked in your profile then since you are not currently offering your customers an annual prepaid plan then you MUST watch Jason Cohen's talk about optimising SaaS cashflow from his 2013 microconf talk "Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business" link to this video…
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chdanielon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Where do you find potential customers to validate your idea / MVP?”

…THINGS* 1. You can "scratch and claw", as Jason Cohen (founder of WPEngine) puts it. He talks more about this in the YT link below and he also puts out this idea of 150 customers, not "1000 true fans". I highly highly recommend watching the video, regardless of going VC/bootstrapped. He also talks about 2 other ways besides scratching and clawing link to this video 2. Building in public is an upward trend these days. Basically you share as many milestones/ups/downs about your journey of building it. This can be a trap as well: it only works if your audience is A) interested in you sharing that, B) probably hackers/builders etc. I asked PG about this and he pretty much summed it up: link 3. As I'm bu…
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yoshyoshon Hacker News • Recommends

On “My experience releasing failed SaaS products”

This talk is the holy grail on this topic link to this video niche b2b, w/ natural recurring cycles, $99 price point at a minimum, and not needing to be on call is most ideal
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stevoskion Hacker News • Recommends

On “Show HN: Csvbox.io – CSV import button for a web app, SaaS or API”

A good place to start with pricing is tiers at $49/$99/$249. (As recommended in Jason Cohen’s classic and awesome talk “Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business”: link to this video ) Customers at very low price points (such as $9/month) tend to churn quickly, and, counterintuitively, send more customer support interactions per customer than at higher points. You’ll never earn enough from them to cover your customer acquisition costs. Getting rid of the cheap plan also removes the, shall we say, more difficult customer.
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philmccon Hacker News • Recommends

On “The New American Micro-SaaS Dream”

Jason Cohen is one of my favorite people speaking in this space. Here’s a great, actionable, talk he did at the equally informative Rob Walling’s conference. link to this video (I have followed this advice, and it has brought me a level of success and comfort I didn’t know I could have, as an admittedly run of the mill developer)
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robocaton Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Is it okay to just bootstrap it, even when VCs are knocking?”

Jason Cohen has an amazing talk on bootstrapping, with some very solid advice from his own experiences: link to this video Personally I think there is a lot of “kudos” for getting VC funding, so founders often get lured just for status reasons, joining the competition to become a unicorn. Unless you want to (or need to) “swing for the fences”, why give up ownership? Being a founder is already hella risky, and accepting VC money increases your leverage and your risk, which is just uneconomic for an average individual to do (unless they are already wealthy). Don’t double down on a risky bet. VCs get preferential shares, and they have a lot of different ways of taking control in the clauses of the contrac…
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mtlynchon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Biggest mistakes to avoid to build a better 1-person business”

I think the better version of these ideas is in Jason Cohen's classic "Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business" talk.0, 1 The difference is that Jason Cohen's advice is based on personal experience growing four businesses to over $1M/yr in revenue. I'm not seeing what qualifies this author to give such broad, sweeping advice about bootstrapping. 0 link to this video 1 link
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satvikpendemon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Every Software Project Is a Startup That Will Probably Fail”

I looked into that book, looks like it's really for venture backed companies trying to form a founding team. I'd recommend that you instead look up micro-SaaS, where you just target making $10k+ monthly recurring revenue and be set, rather than going on the VC treadmill and trying to raise capital, hire a team, etc which is often overkill for first time founders. Rob Walling coined that term initially through his conference on it called MicroConf, he has a new book called link which I'd recommend. His older book Start Small Stay Small is also quite good. But to start off with a free resource, Jason Cohen's video on designing a bootstrapped business can't be beat: link to this video
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patio11on Hacker News • Recommends

On “My Second Year as a Solo Developer”

…ropriately priced; hundreds to thousands of dollars per year) product against those problems, build contingent on getting 10 commits to buy, and be at +/- $100k in 12 to 18 months. Many people with less technical and writing ability have done this in e.g. the MicroConf community. If you want the best paint-by-numbers approach to it I've seen, c.f. link to this video (I'll note that What Got Done is probably a viable boutique SaaS business if you somehow figured out distribution for it, at price points between $50 and $200 per month. My confidence on this approaches total. HNers skeptical because it is technically trivial should probably reflect for a moment on how much time is spent on standups at a co…
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147on Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: My startup has more annual subscribers than monthly. What to make of it?”

Please watch this video at this time stamp: link to this video Jason Cohen goes into why annual prepays are great for bootstrapped SaaS.
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mostlystaticon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Traits of a Desirable Business?”

There's a MicroConf talk from 2013 that discusses some of general traits of a desirable bootstrapped business: link to this video (Notes here: link ) Regarding exits, I'd say low technical complexity also helps1. If your whole business is built on top of Wordpress it's probably easy for an acquirer to find someone to maintain it. If the product is complex and needs regular updates then they might need to hire an experienced full-time dev, so you need more revenue to make up for that. Obviously there's a trade-off, and a lot of custom tech also allows you to differentiate. Update: you might also find this book/podcast helpful link 1 applies to the typical bootstrapped business, there are also hi…
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higginson Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: How do you get started earning money on opensource?”

This might be tangential bc it's not about strictly OSS, but this talk is pretty centering: link to this video Patio11's talks at MicroConf too
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grepLeighon Hacker News • Recommends

On “1k True Fans (2008)”

This is tough to give general advice for, because you'll want to tap your personal strengths. Here's a great talk by Jason Cohen, if you're trying to design a bootstrapped business. He even mentions the 1,000 true fans goal as being unrealistic compared to a handful of high-paying customers: link to this video Happy to brainstorm though. Here's a few questions to get the ball rolling: What're 2-3 things that people have come to you to learn? What are the 3 problems that are top-of-mind for the person who signs your paychecks? What are the top 3 sources of revenue for your current employer? How much is from expansion revenue (existing customers paying more over time) vs. new logos? Besides the all-in co…
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mtlynchon Hacker News • Mentions

On “My Second Year as a Solo Developer”

…ropriately priced; hundreds to thousands of dollars per year) product against those problems, build contingent on getting 10 commits to buy, and be at +/- $100k in 12 to 18 months. Many people with less technical and writing ability have done this in e.g. the MicroConf community. If you want the best paint-by-numbers approach to it I've seen, c.f. link to this video Thanks, I'll check out that video! I hear that advice a lot from people I respect, and I put a lot of effort into that over the past year, but I was never successful. The biggest problem I ran into was that there's this "disconnect problem." I know I'm a competent developer and can build niche solutions to $10k problems, but I don't know wh…
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simonwon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Startup Bootstrapping Plan”

The Twitter thread is a summary of this hour-long MicroConf presentation by Jason Cohen from 2013 link to this video (Not intended as a criticism: summarizing an hour long talk into a Twitter thread is super-useful)
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shooon Hacker News • Mentions

On “Ask HN: What percent of my subscribers should be monthly vs. annual?”

the annual-prepaid cashflow trick is discussed by Jason Cohen in this ancient 2013 microconf presentation, starting at around the 13:20 mark : link to this video
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