[ahoyhere]

There are lots of bootstrapped companies that are not "pre-traction," and, in fact, making hundreds of thousands of dollars (or millions). You'd be very surprised. The "startup" press (including HN) is a real echochamber, and this lack of awareness about bootstrapping is one of the side effects. Check out my speaker list at http://schnitzelconf.com.

That's why I asked everyone I knew - and asked them to ask everyone they knew. I have my feet planted very high on the hierarchy of "famous devs" in more than one circle, so my reach is greater than the average joe. In addition to browsing every women entrepreneur's directory I could find. Including http://startupprincess.com. No joy.

Nary a female product bootstrapper around. Except the lady who's part of the team at Mite.

[lizzy]

Agreed, but once a company is already making lots of money I tend to drop the "bootstrapping" adjective to refer to their present state of operation. :) There are a few women in the NYC startup scene who are "bootstrapping" their companies for months (or longer) until they have revenue or are ready to raise funds.

Your speaker list looks great. And if you are only looking for women coders, who have built successful product companies, that have never taken VC then I agree they are hard to find! But keep in mind that there are not many startup teams that raise VC where there is a founding female coder either.

[marilyn]

I'm a pre-traction bootstrapping lady. Pleasure to meet you.

[ahoyhere]

Hi Marilyn. Awesome. But by "pre-traction" are you referring to List Central? Because, by my definition, that isn't a product. Bootstrapping to me means you have to charge.

It's not that hard to find women heading up traditional web 2.0 properties, like social networks and social media tools (that don't charge).

[lizzy]

Totally get your definition of bootstrapping. But it is also in common usage in a much looser sense -- at least i hear it used that way quite a lot!

Good luck Marilyn!

[ahoyhere]

You're absolutely right, which is why I used all those "my opinion" etc. qualifiers :) Trying to not be a douchebag.

[marilyn]

List Central was the first go at it. The second go is in stealth. It definitely has a price!

[ahoyhere]

Wooohoooo!! Welcome to the beautiful land of products that make money. It's a nice place to be!

Let me give you a little piece of advice-- unstealth yourself!

When we shipped Freckle, we had $1500 in monthly billing at the end of the first round of 30-day trials, because we put up a little teaser page just like this (for our 2nd SaaS product): http://charmde.sk/.

We had about 400 names on it, from tweeting and talking about it, and a pretty decent conversion rate on that. That headstart was worth at least $18k that year (and probably more, since our main factor for growth is word of mouth). We now have 320 names on the Charm list and that's a much narrower audience, so I think our actual rate of emails vs audience is even better.

Typically speaking, "stealth mode" doesn't do a lick of good for paying products. Most people are too stubborn to make a paying product to begin with, much less copy one that isn't out yet. On the other hand, people love the opportunity to put their name in for a new product that will help them -- and if you don't capture their email, they'll just forget about it.