Have you ever fallen into one of these traps as a bootstrapped founder? - **From losing momentum to not listening to your users,** founders consider the most common pitfalls, and explore ways to combat them. - **Thinking of sponsoring an event as a w
Have you ever fallen into one of these traps as a bootstrapped founder?
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From losing momentum to not listening to your users, founders consider the most common pitfalls, and explore ways to combat them.
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Thinking of sponsoring an event as a way to promote your business? Whether in-person or digital, here's why a sponsored event should be on your radar.
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Founder Tiago got 750 unique users by leveraging the Indie Hackers site in a powerful way for his platform, the Wannabe Entrepreneur Community. Below, he shares two essential elements for standing out on Indie Hackers!
Want to share something with nearly 100,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
🕳 Avoid These Common Bootstrapping Pitfalls
by Orga
I want to bootstrap my company for as long as possible. In your experience, what are the main bootstrapping pitfalls to avoid? What should founders be on the lookout for?
Momentum conundrum
Alejandro Mendoza says that not maintaining momentum is a major pitfall for founders:
Without outside pressure from investors, as things progress, it's very easy to lose the initial momentum that you had coming out of the gate. When you're needing to keep food on the table and a roof over your head, your mission as a bootstrapper can be put on the back burner.
Steve Taylor shares strategies to combat this:
Losing momentum has killed a lot of my past projects. I’m successful in my day job as a software engineer, but so far not on my own projects. In my latest project, I’ve addressed that with these strategies:
- Manage the project as if it’s a day job (i.e. use Jira).
- Set up a non-production environment and do the whole DevOps thing (CI/CD, etc.).
- Focus on building the SaaS foundation first: Things like authentication and authorization, billing, transactional emails, account dashboard, etc.
This helps with the following goals:
- Maintaining momentum even when I have long breaks or go down rabbit holes. It keeps a list of tasks that still need to be done.
- Being able to launch quickly once the core product is ready.
It's working well so far!
Not listening to users
Daniël Klabbers says that the inability to listen is a major risk:
- Building what you want instead of listening to what paying customers (or potential customers) want is a big one. It's very easy to get excited about your giant idea, but does it provide actual value to the target audience? Consider this question deeply.
- Constantly living on the edge of burnout due to carrying the weight of everything. (Here's a list of helpful practices to combat burnout!)
- Wanting to do everything yourself, even when you have cofounders or staff.
Sonic333 chimes in:
Not following a lean development method is a big pitfall. Building unnecessary or nice-to-have features can drain resources quickly without producing any tangible benefits. I would highly recommend reading The Lean Startup; this book made me aware of several mistakes that I was making in my bootstrapping journey.
Getting feedback is difficult, and getting relevant feedback is even more difficult! But you do need it, and you need to listen to it when building.
The almighty dollar
And, of course, as Jan Sroka notes, lack of capital is one of the biggest pitfalls for bootstrapped founders:
Two things that can kill any company, especially bootstrapped ones, quickly are:
- Running out of cash: This refers to the cash that you already have. Plan and secure the longest runway that you can. Things will take longer than you think they will.
- Not enough revenue: This refers to cash that is coming in on top. Pretty much all startup problems can be solved with more revenue!
Watch these two like a hawk, and you'll be way ahead.
Also, keep in mind that not enough revenue is usually an indication of all sorts of other issues. You could be missing product market fit, lacking decent marketing, or a plethora of other things. Hone in on the real issue, and your revenue problem may not be as much of a problem as you initially thought.
What are your tips for avoiding bootstrapping pitfalls? Let's chat!
Discuss this story.
📰 In the News
from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani
🏢 Here are the best and worst US states to start a business in.
📈 Uber stock is surging amid strong ride-hailing demand.
🤫 The Little Miss quizzes are secretly collecting your data.
😴 Sleepagotchi is attempting to gamify sleep by awarding NFTs and crypto for maintaining a consistent sleep schedule.
🤝 The peer-to-peer sharing economy is blooming.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
🎉 Here's Why You Should Sponsor a Company Event
by Syed Balkhi
Sponsoring an event is a time-honored way for businesses to market themselves. It's a way to get in front of potential customers and create goodwill within the community.
But it's not just about marketing. Sponsoring an event can also have other benefits for your business. Here are several reasons you should sponsor an event, whether in-person or digital!
1. Align with your industry community
Founders who want to get involved with their industry community should consider sponsoring an event. This is a great way to show support for the community, network with other businesses, and showcase your company values.
For example, a cosmetics company should sponsor an event for stylists and beauty influencers. This is a great way to connect.
2. Meet new customers
Sponsoring an event can be a great way to tap into good publicity to grow your customer base. Ultimately, the exposure and goodwill that a business can gain from sponsoring an event are well worth the investment!
3. Enhance your brand image
Creating and maintaining a strong brand is critical in today's competitive business landscape. One way to do that is by sponsoring events that reflect your company's values.
When choosing an event to sponsor, selecting one that aligns with your company's values is essential. For example, if you are a sustainable business, you may want to sponsor an event that focuses on environmental issues. By aligning your company with the event, you will be able to reach a new audience as well.
4. Generate new leads
Event sponsorships are a great way to generate new leads for your business. Many events offer sponsors a variety of ways to reach out to people and get solid leads for their efforts.
You can create a pop-up station at established events, invite people to join contests, or simply collect business cards from interested individuals. You can also use event sponsorships as an opportunity to offer discounts and coupons to attendees. No matter what method you choose, event sponsorships provide you with a great way to reach out to new potential customers.
Make sure you collect emails, names, or other information to build a list of leads, and you'll be sure to get more out of an event than you put in.
5. Support a worthy cause
When you sponsor an event, you're also supporting the cause it represents. By aligning your business with a particular cause, you can show your commitment to making a difference in the world. That's something that customers will remember and appreciate.
Not only will this help you attract new customers, but it will also help you retain existing ones. So, consider sponsoring an upcoming event if you want to make a positive impact and grow your business.
6. Boost employee morale
When employees see that their company is committed to supporting the community, it can profoundly affect their morale. They'll be proud to work for a company that is making a positive impact, and that pride can translate into improved performance and higher levels of customer satisfaction.
Sponsoring an event is a great way to show employees that you care about more than just the bottom line.
Wrapping up
Event sponsorships offer a variety of benefits for startups. If you're looking for a way to grow your business, consider a fun, creative, interesting sponsorship and let your ideas run wild!
Have you sponsored a company event? Share your experience below!
Discuss this story.
🧠 Harry's Growth Tip
from the Marketing Examples newsletter by Harry Dry
Wit sharpens contrast.
Go here for more short, sweet, practical marketing tips.
Subscribe to Marketing Examples for more.
🛠 Tiago Taps Into the Power of Indie Hackers
by Tiago
Hi founders! I'm Tiago, and I run the Wannabe Entrepreneur Community, a community for founders just starting out. 99% of the current members are beginner bootstrappers and indie makers, so I am always trying to find low-cost ways to capture the attention of my target users.
The two most successful platforms for me when it comes to capturing my target users are Indie Hackers and Twitter.
In fact, in the last 30 days, my website got 725 new users through leveraging the power of Indie Hackers:
Here's how!
Using Indie Hackers to attract new users
There are two main methods to drive traffic from Indie Hackers to your landing page:
1. Writing posts: Writing good quality posts about something you have learned around your business can be a great way to get people to visit your website.
For example, in this post, I speak about my experience automating my Twitter DMs, and I also take the opportunity to link my personal Twitter and website.
Since Indie Hackers allows the use of markdown, I can easily link my projects without visually damaging the quality of the post. This post got 25 likes and 824 views.
2. Writing comments: This technique has proven to be extremely successful, and is very simple to apply.
Every day, I scan through new Indie Hackers posts to find the ones around the topics where my experience building WBE Space can help.
Then, I do my best to bring value with my answer. Lastly, I always plug my business!
On the image above, you can see an example of one of my answers to a post where the OP asked about the pricing of our products.
Once again, I use the markdown formatting to link the words WBE Space and Bootstrapper's Guide. As you can see in the image below, this simple answer was enough to bring 16 unique visits and 30 page views to my website.
Conclusion
In this post, I shared with you two simple ways to drive targeted traffic from Indie Hackers to your landing page.
It is really important that you always write quality content and bring value to the community. By helping others, you also draw positive attention to what you're working on! Furthermore, you don't want to be marked as spam and downvoted for low-value posts.
If you are starting out your career as a bootstrapper, I have many more tips in my Bootstrapper's Guide, a step-by-step guide that illustrates the building process followed by many successful bootstrappers. Check it out if you're interested!
Discuss this story.
🐦 The Tweetmaster's Pick
by Tweetmaster Flex
I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:
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Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Orga, Priyanka Vazirani, Syed Balkhi, Harry Dry, and Tiago for contributing posts. —Channing
