[Doches]

> We're not bragging (okay, we're bragging a little) but it turns out that not burning through VC cash on ping-pong tables and "growth at all costs" actually works.

Have an internet fist-bump from a fellow successful bootstrapper; this is the way, and you're calling it out!

[jwr]

Fellow (solo) bootstrapper here. Congratulations to the author(s) of the article, and to all the other bootstrappers here. Remember, even if your business is smaller or doesn't have the incredible stellar growth numbers that these people posted, it's still YOUR BUSINESS. You are doing right by your customers (because they keep paying you), you have your own business, you do not depend on VCs, and you don't have to fake anything. This is incredibly liberating and should be cherished!

[steffoz]

Totally! That’s the most important message. The numbers we’ve managed to achieve are beyond even the most optimistic outlook we had ten years ago, and we would have been (and were) genuinely happy and satisfied of what we were doing even with a tenth of the revenue. You definitely don't need this much to be proud of your company.

[abc123abc123]

This is the way! As a fellow bootstrapper let me also add the infinite value of peace of mind. Your business is your own, and you can focus on earnings, quality of life, growth, what ever you like, without annoying VC:s and investors telling you what to do.

As soon as you take in money, the businesses at some level, ceases to be yours. The only flaw is that with bootstrapping and one step at a time, it is more difficult to reach the unicorn-level, but as long as you are fairly successful and don't have infinite cravings and desires in terms of the life you want to live, the bootstrapping way is _the_ way.

[switz]

Fellow bootstrapper checking in. Made an ardent but delicate decision in 2015 not to raise money and ten years later I'm chugging along full-time on my business. Infinitely glad to have chosen this path. It was the right one for me.

[theturtletalks]

Same, I learned to code to build software for my business. I turned it into a SaaS and turned down investment because my original business was already profitable and making the SaaS better was making the business better.

This is why I trust software made by people who come from that industry or have some background. I’ve seen too many startups where the founders are fresh out of college and have never worked in that niche and have never been in the shoes of the people they are trying to sell to. To me, that just means they are trying to get big and get acquired, I’m just a means to that end.

[steffoz]

Unicorn-level sounds extremely stressful, happy to pass the burden to someone else. I seriously can't imagine a sane lifestyle that requires more money than what we already have.

[jacquesm]

Not only that, the vast bulk of unicorn wanna-be's end up failing (sometimes failing upwards though) and then it is all for nothing.

Aiming for the middle ground: reasonable growth, good financial strategies based on unit cost profitability and a very tight hand on the purse will get you a solid business that can serve as the jump off point for many other things on top of giving the founders a much better shot at financial independence. This is all a variation on the risk/reward theme.

[steffoz]

To be fair, it's rarely all for nothing for what I hear. Secondary stock sales [1] are very common and allow founders to take some big chips off the table. To me, it is more a matter of keeping things simple, manageable, safe and more fun for how I like to work :)

https://www.startuphacks.vc/blog/founders-guide-to-secondary...

[jacquesm]

Sure, but your personal preferences have an outsized effect on your chances for success because they are very much aligned.

I know plenty of founders that gave it all and then some (including their health, their family relationships and in some cases their lives) and that ended up worse than the shape they were in when they started. So yes, you hear a lot of stories about secondary stock sales and so on but those are the exceptions and very much not the norm. That's just survivorship bias.

[bpt3]

Fellow small business owner here. Just as a reminder, discussing any successful (where successful is defined as not failed) business is a lesson in survivorship bias.

Most businesses of all sizes, shapes, and forms fail within 10 years.

[gerdesj]

Errm I think me and my mates count as bootstrappers. Never heard the term before but we have paid off the mortgage on our premises and are decidedly boring.

We have three Directors and a slack handful of employees, that varies around 15 to 25 depending on customers, pandemics, Brexit and murderous Russians.

We incorporated in 2000. 25 years later, we are still trading, which is nice. We will never fiddle with unicorns or set the world on fire, we just want to get along comfortably and be able to sleep at night.

My top tip is to build up a current account balance that will cover the basics for your defined risk period. So, for us that period is six months. The basics are: Corporation tax, VAT and salaries. You'll note I don't mention director's remuneration - that's a nice to have (for me).

I have two customers at the moment that are dealing with going bankrupt, although one looks like they will be OK. I refuse to join them. Small business cash flow is hard, really hard. It's so easy to be tempted to do something daft or to ignore warning signs.

The world is a pretty hard place and not all tech companies get to spawn zillionares. You won't get to use my company as a poster child for funky ... whatever but we are still trading and I'm quite happy with that.

Napoleon disparagingly described Britain as a "nation of shop keepers" - I'll take that and wear it as a badge of honour 8)

[steffoz]

There's some real gems in this comment.

> we have paid off the mortgage on our premises and are decidedly boring

We too like to call us boring :) This kind of boring is so good.

> We incorporated in 2000. 25 years later, we are still trading, which is nice. We will never fiddle with unicorns or set the world on fire, we just want to get along comfortably and be able to sleep at night.

On one hand 25 years in business is a mind-blowing achievement. But at the same time, just "nice" is the right way to see it. Being comfortable and sleep well at night is exactly what we all want. You don't need to set the world on fire to be proud of what you do!

[rexreed]

YES! I want to find more stories like this. Where can I find Bootstrappers or seedstrappers who have successfully scaled their companies past a few million in revenue with very small teams?

[jwr]

Why the "a few million in revenue" cutoff?

In a solo-bootstrapped business you don't need a few million (USD or EUR) in revenue to run a successful business and live a really good life. In fact, depending on where you mostly live, much less than a single million might be plenty.

[rexreed]

I'm looking for companies that are small by intent, but also looking to scale sustainably and grow beyond the capabilities of a single person. There are a lot of small businesses / solopreneurs / freelancers who work enough to get by or do a few hundred $K as a salary replacement, but aren't looking to build anything bigger. A lot of those companies also go by the wayside when the founder retires, gets hired, or something happens. And there's already a lot of content and sources for those types of solopreneur / single founder freelancers / side hustle type businesses.

I'm looking for the other stories of small teams scaling big. I'm basically separating side-hustles and solopreneurs as freelancers from a more sustainable business. Revenue is a cutoff as a way to differentiate, but doesn't have to be the only one.

For sure however, a team of 5 doing $20M implies something significant is happening at scale versus a solopreneur making what would otherwise be salary-replacement level money. Nothing wrong with that, of course, I love solopreneurship. Just trying to find those other stories, which are much harder to find.

[lurk2]

Revenue isn’t the correct metric for what the grandparent wants to measure to begin with.

[steffoz]

I know https://tinyteams.xyz/ but it's not specific to bootstrapped companies!

[rexreed]

Yeah and a lot of these are small only temporarily. Many of these startups are following the grow-at-all-costs VC philosophy that doesn't optimize for small team size. So I'm trying to find those alternate stories. Much harder to find, so when I see the post like this of OP's, I get excited. Hard to find stories of teams that are small by intent, but looking to scale big.

[yobbo]

Something feels suspicious about those top three revenue numbers.

[kirso]

This is literally an anti-list of bootstrapped

[codegeek]

Another one from a fellow bootstrapper. I have been doing it for 10+ years with a small team as well. Haven't hit the same revenue as them but still a very good business and has provided me everything I have for last 10 years keeping 100% full control. It is really really hard to do it over such a long period and admire anyone who has done it even better than I have.

[steffoz]

Kudos to you! What’s your current venture, if I may ask?

[codegeek]

Run an LMS product. https://academyofmine.com Working on a big pivot for next year. Funny but the pivot is to go more headless but for learning platform. Would follow your journey going forward.

[lgvld]

LMS stands for Learning Management System, I didn't know.

[EGreg]

Another bootstrapper here. For 14 years. Here is our latest 2025 year in review, for anyone who's interested: https://community.intercoin.app/t/2025-year-in-review/2947

PS: This is not for lack of trying to raise VC, but the trying was not nearly on the level needed to actually raise it. Jeff Bezos and Reid Hoffman tried much harder to raise, with far, far less built. Part of me wishes I had done that. I'm open to advice as to how to raise properly, should it be a Seed round or Series A at this point, and how to get meetings with the VCs and herd the cats in a way that will actually be successful. For reference, I'm based in NYC.

PPS: I've had a lot more success and fun raising from angels (who make their own decisions about their own money) and remain open to it. Especially people who are aligned with what we're doing. I've found much of the VC signaling to be disingenuous (e.g. "we love funding startups who do X" actually means "we want dealflow and orbiters to get into rounds with large well-known VCs"). But maybe that's just my bias because I didn't pursue fundraising diligently enough.

[i_am_a_peasant]

Just give me 13 good (wo)men! And i’ll take the valley

[debarshri]

What you dont see is the pain behind the scenes of a bootstrapped org. It always looks rosy outside.

[gerdesj]

Spin it!

[debarshri]

To begin with theres always have cashflow issues. If it simple subscription based not so much but when it is more b2b enterprise stuff, theres always payment delays that can lead of delayed salaries.

[achillean]

Maybe it depends on the type of business/ customers that you have because I've had the opposite experience. For us as a security SaaS, B2B enterprise is incredibly stable and predictable. B2C has a lot more variability and payment issues compared to large orgs with dedicated procurement departments, vendor processes etc.