Jovan Cicmil's Blog - Bootstrapping

The Time a Guy Spent $600 in 5 Minutes on My Freemium App

November 17, 2022

I used to run a fantasy football (soccer for Americans) game that I built myself. I learned many different things from that experience, from bootstrapping a company to negotiating an exit. This morning, I remembered an interesting tidbit that I’ve never written about — the time a guy logged in and proceeded to spend $600 on upgrades for their fantasy team. Context About 97% of my ...

Five Lessons I Learned Bootstrapping a Fantasy Sports Company

February 21, 2022

I was a bootstrapped founder before it was cool. Back in 2013, when it was all about building a startup and jumping through the funding loops, I bootstrapped a fantasy sports company. It was profitable from the first month. I ran it for a few years before finally selling to a larger competitor. Along the way, I learned a ton of important lessons. Here are the main ones. If you’re ...

Why MRR Is Misleading To Potential Investors

November 11, 2021

MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) is an excellent metric for operators of subscription products. It’s an easy way to keep track of your company’s recurring revenue, especially if you offer several subscription packages. What it is not, however, is a measure of a company’s value. A concerning trend in the world of indie ...

How to Turn Your Employer Into Your First Customer

June 3, 2021

Imagine this. You drag yourself out of bed in the morning. It’s a rainy day and your commute to the office is hell. The soundtrack you play in your car doesn’t even come close to drowning out the sound of horns and engines. By the time you arrive at the office, you are stressed, apathetic, and counting the seconds until you can drive home again in that same rush hour traffic. In the ...

The Rise of the Indie Hackers

April 12, 2021

Remember when half of the tech world were startup founders and the other half were aspiring startup founders? When startups became all the rage, they redefined how new companies are built. Terms such as product-market fit, idea validation, and growth hacking became part of the day-to-day English language. And who could forget the mom test? The lean startup methodology took over the world, ...

Five Rules for Taking Your Project From Idea to Deployment

January 26, 2021

How many side projects have you started and then quit? Software developers are always learning new technologies, trying out new things, and building their ideas. They also build teams, launch startups, and create paid products. However, most developers I have talked to report an abysmal completion rate on their projects. Many have 10 or more unfinished side projects, and most have participated ...

How To Invest in Yourself Like a Growth Company

January 21, 2021

Some of the fastest-growing companies in the world are losing money every year, and yet investors have more and more faith in them each year. The bottom line remains negative, and the stock prices are soaring. Why is that? It all comes down to why the bottom line is negative. The fastest-growing companies often lose money for years because they’re reinvesting all their profits into better ...

How I Negotiated the Sale of My Bootstrapped Business

December 2, 2020

There are probably more articles out there about starting a business and running a business than you can read in a lifetime. But, what about selling a business? If your business is successful, you will eventually want to cash out. For major successes, this can take the form of going public by listing the business in the stock market. For minor ones, you will usually be acquired by a larger ...

How I Built, Promoted, and Sold a Product with No Investments and No Marketing Budget

January 14, 2020

It doesn’t even involve a special kind of product, but it does entirely hinge on your relationship to the product. Eight years ago, I was a beginner programmer with little technical experience and no business acumen whatsoever. I had built no interactive websites, published no viral apps and written no recondite articles on software architecture. What I had was a desire to play fantasy football ...