Bootstrapping for the word of the year?

Either I am having the blue car syndrome, or the community is really talking more and more about bootstrapping.

(The blue car syndrome - whether that’s something my mom with her degree in Psych made up or not - is the idea that you think there are no blue cars on the street. Until the moment you thought about it. And then you start spotting blue cars on every corner.)

A year ago, I had a pivotal moment. I was giving a lecture on fundraising to a group of design engineers when one of them raised a hand and asked: 

"But do we have to raise money?"

I had to pause. And think carefully. On the one hand, I’ve just spent half an hour of their (and my) time talking about angels, VCs and what not. On the other.. 

"No, of course you don’t. In fact, the best thing you can do is to build a business without any outside investment." 

"Why?"

"You save half a year of your time, you keep control and you have no pressure to grow too fast. You also can’t really be kicked out from your own firm. Among other things."

Since then I’ve been thinking more and more about why or why not you should or shouldn’t raise. I even got to a point where I started my own side gig aimed at helping people build zebras not unicorns.

But between all the stuff we saw in Silicon Valley (the series), most entrepreneurship classes resulting in an investor deck and news covering who closed how much all the time.. many people find it difficult to believe that bootstrapped businesses are a feasible option.

So when I read the news about Hubspot buying the Hustle for (allegedly) close to $30 million, I wanted to share this with the world.

This is beautiful news to me not just because they are a bootstrapped company. But also because their idea is very simple. We curate good content and we bring it to you. And it worked brilliantly, given the 1.5M reported subscribers and the sale to a listed company. 

Simple idea, no outside investment, and a phenomenal exit? Do you think they’re just one of a kind? What if I told you there are more? Many more!

Don’t take my word for it. Take a look at Indiehackers - "the place where the founders of profitable businesses and side projects can share their stories transparently". Among other great things they do, they have a place for people to share the real-time revenues their products (usually a side hustle) bring. There you'll find an appointment-reminder app making over $8K/ month and caption-capturing app making close to $100K/month and many more cool projects.

I hope now you’ll also start seeing blue cars on every corner. And pay just a bit more attention to the ones who didn’t raise and made it.