Software by Rob
softwarebyrob.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2007
Rob Walling writes about bootstrapping software startups, pricing, traffic, acquisitions and building small profitable products.
What HN saysCommenters strongly recommend Walling's blog, book and podcast as the best guidance for new software bootstrappers, with a market-first approach.
110HN people shared it
40linked it in comments
146stories submitted
3.2Kstory points
10 years agolast shared
2007people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Homepage17 people · first shared 2010
- 2Why Free Plans Don’t Work10 people · 319 points · first shared 2010 · 114 comments on HN
- 3Your Traffic Sources have a Half-Life6 people · 14 points · first shared 2011 · 3 comments on HN
- 4The Inside Story of a Small Startup Acquisition4 people · 209 points · first shared 2012 · 51 comments on HN
- 5The Inside Story of a Small Startup Acquisition (Part 3)4 people · 69 points · first shared 2012 · 4 comments on HN
- 6It’s Easy to Be Great… It’s Hard to Be Consistent4 people · 35 points · first shared 2010 · 13 comments on HN
- 7The Stairstep approach to bootstrapping4 people · 4 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 8How to detect a toxic customer3 people · 457 points · first shared 2010 · 114 comments on HN
- 9Why You Should Start Marketing the Day You Start Coding3 people · 126 points · first shared 2010 · 61 comments on HN
- 10The Single Most Important Career Question You Can Ask Yourself3 people · 120 points · first shared 2008 · 23 comments on HN
- 11Ways to Decrease Your Chance of Bootstrapping a Successful Company3 people · 11 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 12What the Hell Does a “Business Guy” Do?3 people · 9 points · first shared 2011 · 2 comments on HN
- 13Highly Successful Bootstrapped Startups2 people · 226 points · first shared 2011 · 68 comments on HN
- 14Warning: Software Startups are Not as Easy as Everyone Says2 people · 116 points · first shared 2007 · 39 comments on HN
- 15The Inside Story of a Small Startup Acquisition (Part 2)2 people · 100 points · first shared 2012 · 9 comments on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
bengali3 · 2015-01-12
Check out Rob Walling ( http://www.softwarebyrob.com/ ) if you haven't come across him yet, his book is subtitled- 'A developers guide to launching a startup' and it was eye opening for me (market first, marketing second, THEN build actual product). His podcasts called "startups for the rest of us" have great tips about overcoming and transitioning and I find are very energizing knowing others have gone through similar.
Every case is different, best of luck!
revorad · 2013-02-24
To both you and raphinou and others battling with the same questions, I cannot recommend Rob Walling's work enough.
His blog [0], book [1] and podcast [2] address the exact concerns any new software bootstrapper faces.
He also runs the Micropreneur Academy, but I don't have any direct experience of that.
He also organises Microconf, and I really recommend watching his talk from last year - http://www.microconf.com/videos-2012.html
The sheer number of products he has built, launched, acquired - both successes and failures - over the years gives all of his advice a lot of weight.
[0] http://www.softwarebyrob.com/
[1] http://www.startupbook.net/
[2] http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/
PS I don't have any affiliation with Rob. I'm just really grateful for all his excellent work.
mijustin · 2013-01-22
Nathan and Amy: this is awesome. By letting us “listen in” on your dialogue the lessons in here feel genuine. Great work.
To add a little fuel to the fire, I’ll make a few comments:
> Amy: "I’ve never seen anyone do successful presales for a software product, for the record."
I guess it depends on the definition of “successful” – Jason Cohen had 40 pre-sales before he started building WPEngine: http://blog.asmartbear.com/stop-customer-interviews.html
> Amy: "I don’t know ANYONE… ANYONE… who outsourced their product and made a success out of it."
Again, it depends on your definition of “success” but I personally think Rob Walling is pretty successful, and he outsources almost all of his development: http://www.softwarebyrob.com
Ecio78 · 2012-03-31
Rob Walling (author of Start Small Stay Small) also gives away for free a PDF ebook containing many of the stuff that is also present in the book. You just have to register on his blog site http://www.softwarebyrob.com/ and you'll receive a link. Of course doing so you'll be subscribed to his newsletter (but it's part of the customer acquisition "game", no? :-))
swombat · 2012-01-18
It certainly is, and I've linked to several of Rob Walling (http://www.softwarebyrob.com/) 's posts in the past. Rob is a great example of a one-man-army type of entrepreneur. I know a few others who are successfully applying this model.
Re: parallelising, obviously you can only focus on one thing at a time, but many ideas take time to build out - as in, waiting time. If you've got control over your time, why not spend that waiting time testing out other ideas? In practice, I think most people who are still at the validation stage will in fact parallelise part of the process.
inkaudio · 2011-03-15
You should read both, "Getting Real" is more focus on starting
the project and getting the project done, Rework has some of that but it's more about efficiently running your business and marketing it. These book and the one by http://www.softwarebyrob.com/ are the best business books for startups, after that just get to work on code and design.
gacba · 2011-01-06
You should visit Micropreneur Academy: http://micropreneur.com and also check out http://softwarebyrob.com and http://singlefounder.com. I belong to the MA, and it's a great resource for solo founders.
PaulJoslin · 2010-08-02
In my opinion this is the best book out there I've read relevant to starting your own start up!
http://www.startupbook.net/
I've read quite a few and where some are in sightful / useful when scaled or when funded, this book is the best I've read for a typical software developer to have a successful start up business!
It is also written by a fellow HN'er Rob Walling - so you know it'll be full of great information! Check out his blog 'SoftwarebyRob' for a taster.
http://www.softwarebyrob.com/
joeax · 2015-07-06
I recommend you take a look at Rob Walling's blog: http://www.softwarebyrob.com/
He also runs the Microprenuer Academy that focuses on helping and promoting one-person startups. His key advice: focus on a niche industry or audience.
For example, a few years ago I had this great idea of building a task management app. I quickly discovered there were dozens of them, Asana, Producteev, Flow, Trello, etc. Using his advice, I could have focused developing a task app for a particular industry, say industrial engineers, architects, investment advisors, etc. His point being that specific industries have very specific needs, and one-size-fit-all, general purpose apps rarely targets those needs.
Bottom line, think about what kinds of app you'd enjoy building, social media, news, productivity app, game, whatever, then cross breed it with some underserved market.
Example: LinkedIn + Oil and Gas industry = oilpro.com
ckib16 · 2016-10-10
Great point r2dnb. This used to be my mentality as well and it hurt me.
I was looking for a "smart" business that was "worthy" of me. How could these people spend so much time on such an indefensible & unscalable process?!
Well, the joke was on me. My brother stopped consuming info and started Amazon FBA. And he does really well (full-time job replacement). Instead of waiting for the perfect idea - he executed.
Now I'm happily off my high horse and trying to follow in his footsteps.
Lesson learned - there is no perfect business. Get started with something simple and build from there.
Great article on this incremental approach for anyone interested: http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2015/03/26/the-stairstep-approach-to-boot…
jkingsbery · 2016-07-11
If you are interested in stories of that nature, http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ talks about the process of two guys who've done that before and are in the middle of doing it now. Rob Walling has a separate site, http://www.softwarebyrob.com/, where he talks about the same sorts of things.
jsingleton · 2015-08-14
The http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com podcast is quite good. Rob also has a blog: http://www.softwarebyrob.com
christinamltn · 2015-08-03
Rob Walling did this and write/talks a lot about how to do it: http://www.softwarebyrob.com
mcdougle · 2014-01-10
dividend stocks seem great if you use dollar-cost averaging, DRIP investing, and you do the research necessary; they also seem like they take a very long time to build up a sizeable portfolio.
I really like Rob Walling's description of what he does with software businesses [1] though, and my plan is to do something like that.
[1] http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/06/24/websites-as-investments/
smanek · 2012-12-16
Unknown is relative, but here are some of the rss feeds I'm subscribed too:
http://nosql.mypopescu.com/
http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/
http://eli.thegreenplace.net/
http://www.stefankrause.net/wp/
http://mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com/
http://www.cowtowncoder.com/blog/blog.html
http://highlyscalable.wordpress.com/
http://hunch.net/
http://perspectives.mvdirona.com/
http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/
http://www.softwarebyrob.com/
http://blog.mikemccandless.com/
polyfractal · 2012-12-11
Rob Walling has a bundle of these little app, all making pretty good money.
[1] http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/
[2] http://www.softwarebyrob.com/
clarky07 · 2012-07-27
Lots of smart people disagree with this. You should start marketing when you start coding. Find out who is interested, what they want, etc. When you launch, you don't want to do it to crickets.
If you have something people will search for, you can start your SEO and start adwords. 6 months down the road you are actually getting some search traffic, and your adwords have over time built up a mailing list.
If you haven't read this article by Rob Walling I highly recommend it.
http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/10/14/startup-marketing-part-6-why-y…
zizee · 2012-01-27
I wonder if wildbit considered selling the product to someone who could give it some love?
Perhaps it could have been similar to this recent story: http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2012/01/25/the-inside-story-of-a-small-st…
dean · 2011-11-25
Rob Walling (http://www.softwarebyrob.com/) has a book called 'Start Small, Stay Small' that sounds like what you are looking for. He talks about finding a problem to solve, and has lots of practical tips and advice on how to determine if there is a market for the solution.
amjith · 2011-04-11
Not sure I agree.
I feel that you should get at least 10 people to agree they are willing to pay for your product in order to validate it. It might not be true for all scenarios, but it definitely seems valid for the idea that is presented in the blog post.
This is an excellent article that lists some valid points why you should start marketing the day you start coding.
http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/10/14/startup-marketing-part-6-why-y…
stoney · 2010-10-13
It largely depends on your goals and also the work required to develop & run this startup. You wouldn't have to get too many of those businesses signed up to earn a full time salary.
Take a look at http://www.softwarebyrob.com, which is all about micropreneurial software businesses (basically targeting very small niches) - his book Start Small, Stay Small is interesting reading. Patrick McKenzie's (or patio11 on this site) Bingo Card Creator would be another good example (http://www.kalzumeus.com/).
amccloud · 2010-08-18
I can't see why you shouldn't start off with a free plan available. Like you said, a free account is a great poe.
If you're having low conversion rates from free to premium accounts, you could always experiment with hiding the free account registration - http://basecamphq.com/signup - or completely removing it. Ruben Gamez has a wonderful write up of his experience on this topic http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/08/18/why-free-plans-dont-work/
bemmu · 2008-12-10
Answering my own question here, but I found some good pointers in http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2007/07/05/startup-studio-excellent-start…
navait · 2016-03-18
If your product is good, you don't need to have a free plan. If you're the sort of business that needs a job board, $149/mo is peanuts for the value you get.
http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/08/18/why-free-plans-dont-work/
rwalling · 2015-12-02
Here's a write-up of a few things I learned on the journey: http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2015/12/02/what-i-learned-buying-growing-…
davidw · 2014-09-29
From what I read, Horowitz' book is very much about the typical VC fueled startup.
At this point in my life, I'm not interested in that except out of curiosity, I'd rather read books by/for/about boostrapped startups.
Where does Thiel's book fall in that range? Reading the comments, it looks like it's way more of an idea book than anything practical, and targetted at people who want to do something new and radical. Fair enough, but it looks like an entertainment read rather than anything applicable.
http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/08/05/why-startup-founders-should-st…
callmeed · 2014-01-27
Yeah, this is not a good blog post. I feel like the author did some basic Google'ing for content without doing much due diligence or checking dates.
Also, I've seen Carbonmade come up in lists before [1], but I wouldn't ever list them in any current list of bootstrapped companies. Their homepage hasn't changed much in 3 years [2], their traffic appears to be headed south [3], and frankly I don't know any professional creative who uses their service for their portfolio (anecdotal I know, but I work in the industry). No offense to anyone at Carbonmade, but I think you can find much better examples of bootstrapped companies in the photo/creative world (SmugMug for example).
[1] http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2011/09/01/ten-highly-successful-bootstra…
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20110129083114/http://carbonmade.com/
[3] http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/carbonmade.com
jasonswett · 2013-04-23
I think Rob Walling's "What the Hell Does a 'Business Guy' Do?" article does a good job of answering the question. Link: http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2011/04/19/what-the-hell-does-a-business-…
After reading this article, I thought, "Okay, 'business guy' = marketer." That added a lot of clarity for me.
ollierattue · 2011-11-02
'9 Ways to Decrease Your Chance of Bootstrapping a Successful Company' - Number #1: Choosing a Market with Funded Competition
http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2011/11/02/9-ways-to-decrease-your-chance…
Although yes it does validate the space and yes there can be room for more than one. Note 'decrease' not 'kill' :)