I work for a bootstrapped company. Back in 1999 the guy had to borrow $50,000 from his mom because his credit card debt was too much. He was getting about $5000 a month from the sale of a small travel company he sold to the co-founder.
Once he figured out what would work (and that took awhile after a few missed tries) he had his market and intial funding based upon a really bad working demo I created (that would break when more then 1 person was using it at a time and I would have to reboot the server after about 5 minutes or so). The intial funding came from the customers who were going to use it. There were 40 and each paid $3,000. That was enough money to hire some very inexpensive "programmers" from a local trade school and we were able to upgrade the demo into a full product.
The company is doing just fine, has 4000 monthly subscribers, I am making him a new product and I believe he will double the number of subscribers.
I did just read the article :) But I am familiar with bootstrapping. On my own I am about to release "OfficeZilla Pro" and pray that there is enough take up to at least pay the $500 a month hosting bill. I am working on versions for vertical markets and one day will see it to profitability.
Once he figured out what would work (and that took awhile after a few missed tries) he had his market and intial funding based upon a really bad working demo I created (that would break when more then 1 person was using it at a time and I would have to reboot the server after about 5 minutes or so). The intial funding came from the customers who were going to use it. There were 40 and each paid $3,000. That was enough money to hire some very inexpensive "programmers" from a local trade school and we were able to upgrade the demo into a full product.
The company is doing just fine, has 4000 monthly subscribers, I am making him a new product and I believe he will double the number of subscribers.
I did just read the article :) But I am familiar with bootstrapping. On my own I am about to release "OfficeZilla Pro" and pray that there is enough take up to at least pay the $500 a month hosting bill. I am working on versions for vertical markets and one day will see it to profitability.