Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business with Jason Cohen

What people said

satvikpendem · 2023-09 · Strong recommendation

I looked into that book, looks like it's really for venture backed companies trying to form a founding team. I'd recommend that you instead look up micro-SaaS, where you just target making $10k+ monthly recurring revenue and be set, rather than going on the VC treadmill and trying to raise capital, hire a team, etc which is often overkill for first time founders. Rob Walling coined that term initially through his conference on it called MicroConf, he has a new book called [LINK] which I'd recommend. His older book Start Small Stay Small is also quite good. But to start off with a free resource, Jason Cohen's video on designing a bootstrapped business can't be beat: [VIDEO]

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mtlynch · 2023-06 · Strong recommendation

I think the better version of these ideas is in Jason Cohen's classic "Designing the Ideal Bootstrapped Business" talk.[0, 1] The difference is that Jason Cohen's advice is based on personal experience growing four businesses to over $1M/yr in revenue. I'm not seeing what qualifies this author to give such broad, sweeping advice about bootstrapping. [0] [VIDEO] [1] [LINK]

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robocat · 2022-09 · Strong recommendation

Jason Cohen has an amazing talk on bootstrapping, with some very solid advice from his own experiences: [VIDEO] Personally I think there is a lot of “kudos” for getting VC funding, so founders often get lured just for status reasons, joining the competition to become a unicorn. Unless you want to (or need to) “swing for the fences”, why give up ownership? Being a founder is already hella risky, and accepting VC money increases your leverage and your risk, which is just uneconomic for an average individual to do (unless they are already wealthy). Don’t double down on a risky bet. VCs get preferential shares, and they have a lot of different ways of taking control in the clauses of the contracts you sign which disempower you, and in return you get shitty common shares and often lose control for the worst reasons. I helped found a small business, and we retained full ownership which worked out great for us, although we will never get those mystical 7/8/9 figure payouts. The majority of founders only make wages[1]. We were in an incubator during our inception and I saw a lot of businesses get sidetracked by all the funding bullshit, control issues, stress, wasting time chasing investors, trying to follow conflicting or bad advice. If you do want to chase funding, consider applying for [LINK] which will help avoid you getting shafted. Other VC transactions are highly negotiation information asymmetric, because they have done many many transactions and you are doing your first, so

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