[bootstrapping]

> bootstrapping success stories often remain unknown

Bingo. I don't even want to be noticed (hence this throwaway account).

My startup has taken over an entire national B2B SaaS market segment but our major competitor hasn't realised yet. They deal in many segments and are a classic incumbent dinosaur, and were recently acquired so their attention is elsewhere. We've done no marketing, never been mentioned in any press, raised no capital. All growth purely by referrals. The more market share we can collect before the dinosaur notices I kicked its tail, the better. We're 100% bootstrapped, debt and dilution free and planning to stay that way, and to remain submarine as long as possible. As a result I'm entirely focused on serving our customers and improving the platform and our organisation to suit them, not running around wasting founder energy chasing investors and trying to dress up the company to look pretty for VCs.

[rdiddly]

Sounds like a good strategy. Are you profitable at this point?

That's too bad about "bootstrapping" - it's a good userID!

[bootstrapping]

That's one thing about bootstrapping, your P&L practically mirrors the cashflow statement so we had to be profitable from the get-go. We're well past that take-off stage where I was unsure if the business was going to fly or not, so now I'm following the Bezos strategy of re-investing all earnings back into the company (sure beats coughing up income taxes). So yes, with the caveat that I'm not paying myself a cent, since as majority shareholder I think of equity as my comp, it's profitable.

It helped a lot that on Day One we had $5000 of AWS credits, two founders with spare time and tons of business & tech experience, a market segment ripe for the picking, an enthusiastic (and well-connected) launch customer for the MVP, and disruptive home-grown IP that created more customer value (even in MVP form) than anything else on the market. I couldn't have asked for better initial conditions for a bootstrapped company.

(yes I was surprised the account ID wasn't taken already. maybe I won't throw it away)