[joshontheweb]

I was able to bootstrap a SaaS business by working as a contract engineer half to three quarters time and building my company in the remaining time. I lowered expenses by moving in with family and eventually to SE Asia until profitability. This meant I had infinite runway but also it took longer . I prototyped for six months and then ran/tested the service for free for almost two years before it was ready for paid plans. Then it went from 0 to ~15k MRR in the first month. A couple of tricks like requiring Dropbox connection for users file storage and utilizing webrtc’s p2p capabilities helped keep running expenses manageable during the lead up to profitability.

[falco925]

I have a similar story except I didn't move anywhere to reduce burn, I just worked a full time job and built the company in my off hours. But I did prototype, charging a small fee, for almost 2 yrs too. Once I launched the v1, I went from 1k MRR to 20k MRR within 12 months. Congrats on your success. It's always hard work.