> For bootstrappers, the approach I've heard of is simply just nicheing down to find a segment of the market that is big enough to support you, but small enough to not be worth it to bigger players.

Thank you, as someone hoping to bootstrap myself this is makes sense. Any idea how to make the niche smaller? The broader market I'm thinking of is huge (likely billions of customers), I suppose I could charge more to narrow it down but that has other risks.

Pick one single customer and fanatically meet their individual needs. Then add a second. Repeat until you’re no longer needing to tweak your system to delight a new customer. At that point you need sales and you have a business! :)

You will quite likely end up with a non-scalable “services” business instead of a scalable “product” business. I did.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. Because not many people can even reach that point.

You need to be willing to “fire” customers.

I’ve also been here, and it’s a delicate balance.

It's a balance.

We had a high touch service for B2B installation: we charged clients for consulting (business analysis) to configure and integrate our system.

The cost to clients for the consulting was approx 1 year of our SaaS fees. The up front consulting helped heaps with our cashflow, but it also significantly limited our growth rate.

But it worked for us at the time (mid 2000's).

Definitely hard to avoid over-customisation of software for one client: but you need to avoid that problem with any software product servicing multiple clients.

Previous company with a similar product depended too heavily upon ongoing consulting fees and that caused a variety of troubles for that business.

In the idealized solution that I would build/provide, I'd already be meeting the needs of many individuals with "just" one top-of-the-line product. The only issue, and the need for quotes, is because this no-compromise product that would likely be competitive with the best in the industry, would also be quite expensive.

This, fortunately or not, kind of circles back to the "make more expensive products" aspect.

Take the intersection of two categories.

Well put! Nice framing.

This has little to do with whether you are VC backed or bootstrapped.

The amount of effort to sustain yourself is going to be almost the same regardless of which category you are in. Either you have a category that is popular but will attract dozens of competitors no matter how small your niche is or you have a product that requires effort to market.

These days with so many no/low-code tools getting a product into market has never been easier. And that's both a positive and negative for bootstrappers.

A slight difference on the bootstrapped side is to only build what generates revenue from day 1.

Funded startups can have different metrics for growth.

Is revenue really the only metric though?

Bootstrapped means no pressure from investors, potentially infinite (or lifelong) runway.

A bootstrapped startup could go years before turning from a bunch of happy free users to a revenue machine

Bootstrapped and infinite runway doesn’t go hand in hand lol.

Runway always costs. By that definition it’s artificially subsidized.

That definition sounds more like a project than a product/startup.

Bootstrap is a business, cash flow is like blood flowing with oxygen in it, so the body can move and go do thing

Steve Blanks’s definition is a good or that a startup is a temporary organization dedicated to finding a repeatable and scalable business model.

Life costs money, if a project is coddled to never become a product. it’s artificially subsidized by an investor (you) and default dead.. and it’s not a business that makes profit to pay the Bills or pay for growth.

> Runway always costs. By that definition it’s artificially subsidized.That definition sounds more like a project than a product/startup.

it doesn’t matter imo.

you just need to solve a problem. you need to go talk to people and help them.

if someone isn’t using your product that you’re building to solve their problem and they are complaining about said problem, it’s because nobody else has tried selling to them.

obviously over simplified but I think it’s true.

While I'm not convinced it is VC vs. bootstrapped that should differentiates frameworks, you should read this book, it is simply the closest thing to a step by step user guide to finding PMF as I've seen, and it worked for me: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-Blank/dp/09...