derrickreimer

We're a Batch 1 company and I can attest to the quality of the program. The cash is nice, but the real value is in the community and extensive mentorship network! Stoked to see TinySeed becoming a compelling investment vehicle.

Great points here. It's very tricky to get accurate information from potential customers. The fact that there is demand for what you want to build is a necessary, but not sufficient quality -- you must dig deeper to make sure the pain is bad enough for someone to adopt your product / switch from whatever they are doing now. I have to remind myself of this constantly :).

Ouch. That's not at all what I'm trying to do. I have no shortage of passion, but passion alone does not make a viable business.

My hope is that my post will help others think about choosing an idea that fits with their goals, so that it will work out for the long haul.

Thank you! It happens to the best of us, I haven't been super consistent with writing regularly. Trying to change that!

Thank you!

That's awesome!

You're welcome! There are some alternative funding sources for bootstrappers that could be interesting for you:

- TinySeed (https://tinyseed.com/)

- Earnest Capital (https://earnestcapital.com/)

- Indie.vc (https://www.indie.vc/)

Each works a little differently. My friend Matt Wensing did a comparison of them: https://medium.com/swlh/alternative-funding-calculus-a-quant...

Hope this helps!

Thank you! I also added a redirect from the previous URL.

Thanks! Glad you are finding it helpful!

Totally! To clarify, by the "drop the ball" do you mean knowing when to call it quits if something is not working out? I recently wrote about my experience with that: https://www.derrickreimer.com/essays/2019/05/17/im-walking-a...

My friend Justin Jackson also published a good article about this too: https://justinjackson.ca/giveup

Every company has a "first customer"

That's correct, I was referring to feature-richness.

Author here. Slack is undoubtedly sticky, although I challenge the assumption that all integrations need to be replicated in a niche play. Those who did adopt Level were willing to give up a number of integrations that were low-value to them or were just causing noise that proved unnecessary.

Thanks so much

Thanks so much!

Bravo Rob & Einar. So many founders are consuming their nights and weekends trying to get their side business off the ground with enough traction to be able to leave their day out. I'm glad to see someone finally tackling "funding for the rest of us" ;)

As the seller, I paid a fee to FE International (my broker). Similar to having a realtor help sell your house, it was absolutely worth it. FEI compile a prospectus, distributed it to their network of buyers, advised on selling price, sat in on calls with potential buyers to keep the conversation on point, and overall helped me maintain my sanity.

We had several hour-long screensharing sessions where I walked the buyers through the codebase and talked through the data model, architecture, etc.

I think the most important thing is to know your target market, how to reach them, and to be talking to them about how best to solve their problems.

The bottom line for me was time and focus. If I had more hours in the day, I would have kept Codetree and grown it. My other business Drip was experiencing crazy growth and Codetree had always been a side business, taking the back seat to the needs of Drip. At the time of sale, I had at least 50 different feature ideas/growth opportunities written down but very little time to implement them. Rather than watch the product slowly fade away, the next best outcome for me was to see someone else realize that potential.

Good question! I felt really good about the prospect of selling to Kareem and the partners after our initial conversation. It seemed like a really good fit. Probably the point of highest doubt for me was after receiving the first offer. I was able to stay pretty logical about things, but I was definitely concerned we would not be able to bridge the initial gap. Having David from FE International as an advisor was key to keeping me level-headed. After we agreed on a price, I was pretty confident we would close.

Sorry about that, servers have been under high load today.

Awesome, would love to chat. I'll drop you an email.