Hey bootstrappers,

Where do your ideas come from?

The muse often visits me at night, just as turn the light off to sleep. It’s a tad inconvenient, but that's why I keep a notepad beside my bed.

Yours might come in the shower, while walking the dog, or somewhere else entirely. The source of your ideas doesn’t matter, but their quality does – at least in business. 

How do you validate your business ideas? Here are three ideas from this week’s bootstrapped founders. 

1. Build an MVP. Gather feedback from early customers to refine your idea or reject it in favor of something new. It needn’t be perfect or pretty, just functional.
   
   
2. Research the competition. Can you offer something faster, easier, or cheaper? Adding new features could also help you acquire customers.
   
   
3. Pitch to your ideal client. No product? No problem. Pitch your idea to someone who’d benefit most from it and sign up your first customer before you build.  

Validating your ideas costs little. You might only need a website, a phone call, or a few hours of engineering. Start small, develop iteratively, and you’ll succeed just as this week’s founders did. 

Chris Roper

Managing Editor

P.S. You might've noticed the wrong issue number and date on the last two issues. Despite my best efforts to give you an extra two weeks' vacation, time did in fact march on. Sorry! 

Mike Slaats built a simple webpage to gather feedback on Upvoty in private beta before it launched. Only after 200 signups did he hire a developer to build the MVP.

You Build Better Products When You Ask What Customers Want, Argues the Founder of Six-Figure SaaS, Upvoty

Serial entrepreneur Mike Slaats was doing well. His second business, Vindy, was pulling in over a million dollars ARR, and customers loved the product. But something was wrong. He didn’t feel passionate about the problem anymore and dreamed of starting a SaaS.

Vindy’s roadmap relied upon customer feedback, but Mike couldn't find an affordable tool to gather it. Sensing it was time for a change, Mike sold Vindy in 2018 to build Upvoty, a SaaS that turns feedback into product enhancements, and has since earned over a quarter of a million ARR.

“During private beta, we launched the first version of Upvoty that early birds could use for free for another six months. Some were so excited that they upgraded right away to one of our paid plans, which resulted in an MRR of $250 before we even launched.”

Turning points

1. Launching in private beta. Gathering signups before building the product helped prove market demand, and many of that first cohort signed up for a paid plan on launch day.

2. Focusing on SEO rather than paid advertising. Mike spent nothing on paid advertising but wrote helpful articles on relevant topics to attract leads.

3. Hiring a technical advisor. Mike dreaded working with a cofounder, but as he was non-technical, he needed someone to help him communicate with his engineering team. 

Murali Kumar pitched his idea for a sales training business to another enterprise, relying on his professional record to convince the company he could deliver on his promises.

How This Founder Earns $300,000 ARR Helping Indian Call-Center Staff Land New Careers in Sales

Murali Kumar excelled in sales, a field that few people respected in India but he believed was the key to prosperity. After losing his job during the pandemic, Murali decided to teach his friends how to sell, and after building a team of 40-plus salespeople, saw an opportunity.

Rather than companies hire and train their own sales teams, which is time-consuming and expensive, Murali would supply and train the staff at much lower cost. The business model was so successful that Murali could barely keep up with client referrals.

“Hiring salespeople takes a long time. Usually, you end up hiring the wrong ones because you want to do it fast. Companies want a salesperson who already has experience, even if it’s unrelated, but they don’t understand the damage they do by hiring people who aren’t trained.”

Turning points

1. Training friends who’d lost their jobs. Murali taught his unemployed friends how to sell, and they later became the first cohort of salespeople for his first client.

2. Asking other businesses to test his business model. Since Murali’s model was cheaper and faster than conventional hiring, his first clients were eager to try it.

3. Pitching universities to supply trainees. Midgear has negotiated relationships with Indian universities to train students online using edtech, boosting revenue.

Sebastian Seilund and Esben Friis-Jensen’s idea was far from original, but their competitors had executed poorly, giving the duo ample space to enter and thrive in the market.

A Crowded Market Didn’t Deter These Founders – and Their Tenacity Paid Off to the Tune of Seven Figures

Sebastian Seilund is no stranger to failure. After his first product, Studio1, failed to ignite interest, he asked users what went wrong. A better question would’ve been, “What did I do right?” Turns out, people loved the product tour – but was there a business in it?

Sebastian built an MVP and shared it with his Studio1 focus group. They loved it. But with so many well-funded competitors, he had to offer more features and a better experience to survive. With cofounder Esben Friis-Jensen,  the duo has succeeded when many might've given up.  

“It’s not about being well-funded or having a big sales team or customer success team. It’s about having the best product and allowing people to try it, see the value, and buy it. Our competitors’ UX was poor and they weren’t product-led or product-focused.”

Turning points

1. Asking for feedback. Before abandoning Studio1, Sebastian asked people why it failed. Their answers sparked the idea for Userflow.

2. Harvesting ideas from the market. What the competition lacked, Sebastian and Esben built.

3. Offering free trials. While their competitors burned cash on paid marketing, the cofounders focused on free trials of their superior software to win new business.

Advice of the Week

“Don’t be discouraged by somebody else having built a solution in the space. We started a company in a very crowded space but we did it with the user in mind. We aren’t even close to being finished with building software businesses that solve problems. Go get it.”

 - Sebastian Seilund, Userflow

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