David Heinemeier Hansson at Startup School 08

What people said

leelin · 2020-12 · Strong recommendation

Reading the ending hits closer to home and made me more sad than expected! Andrew Welch was uneasy about the idea of scaling up, especially when they could survive as they were just fine off their utility products Way back in the day, YC always said not to worry about competitors raising tons of money (not sure if that's still the rec). The 2008 DHH boostrapping talk during Startup School is still one of the most influential videos on my career as a founder. But that path is increasingly less popular! [VIDEO] Lastly, for all the bolo comments out there, I remember the huge transition from modems to school ethernet that made it playable - it was honestly one of the reasons I was looking forward to dorm life!

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bira · 2012-04 · Strong recommendation

Have you already watched DHH's "How to Make Money Online" presentation ( [VIDEO] )? If not, watch it ASAP. If you go down the bootstrapping road, you must have profits coming in, to fund and further the development of your product. Sooner or later you will have to make money and since you don't seem to have a lot of funds laying around, the sooner the better. Moreover, have you validated your idea(s) (included the previous, failed attempts to excute them and build a viable business)? Are you sure that there are enough people out there with the burning desire to throw money at you for this app to make it worth the hustle? (assuming you want to sell your app, which would be the best and most simple way to make money) As PG says, the worst mistake one can make trying to build a company is building something THEY think is NEEDED by their customers and not what the market actually needs. Listen to your audience. Do the people need an iphone app to "truly define us"? Creating a kickstarter campaign was a good move, by the response you'll get you'll understand if you are solving a real problem or not. To expose more people to your app (and validate it or not with a wider set of data) you can use an adwords\facebook voucher and create a campaign (just search for them). Link to your homepage, track how many visitors opt in vs how many of them just land and bounce away, not interested. Ask questions on Answers sites, open threads on forums your ideal customer hangs out, the more eyebal

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csallen · 2011-11 · Strong recommendation

I haven't read the book that some others have been recommending, but it looks good (I respect a lot of the people who gave it favorable reviews on its website). Aside from that, I'd say you should do some research on others who've successfully followed this path. They exist -- they're just less likely to show up in tech news, which is heavily influenced by investors (who only care about big wins) and bloggers (who only care about big news). Take a look at the early blog posts from Balsamiq's Peldi, anything by Patrick Mackenzie, the Wufoo guys, Gary Vaynerchuck, or anything from the 37Signals guys. This talk by DHH never fails to motivate me: [VIDEO]

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