[mjwhansen]

I hope this doesn’t discourage you! There’s a thriving community of indie founders who are earning a good living from their own companies, many of whom are developers who struck out on their own.

Most don’t have fancy degrees or companies on their resumes, though a few do. Many don’t have a college degree at all.

It’s definitely possible to build a profitable small tech business. We’ve been running our own company full-time for over 6 years now, and make a better living than we did as employees. It did take 3 years of patience as it grew from a side project (so we’re in year 9 now, all told).

FWIW self-funding a hardware company, especially when outside expertise is required, is definitely bootstrapping on hard mode. (Though I do know someone who bootstrapped a rocket company!) Most of us do software.

I encourage you to check out a MicroConf Local if you’re interested in learning more about the indie founder world.