#2 SaaS Bootstrappers

Welcome to our second issue where I will share the news that you don’t want to miss about SaaS bootstrappers.

Before sharing the links and my comments on each, I would like to give some details about how the SaaS Bootstrappers newsletter is going:

• In the last 7 days, 65 people subscribed to my newsletter. Welcome to each! 🤗

• I started to do interviews with SaaS Bootstrappers. 10 interviews had been scheduled, 3 of them were recorded.

• Those interviews will be in a written format and I will share them on Sundays for a #sundayread.

1- Userflow is one of the SaaS bootstrapped companies generating more than $4M ARR with 3 people - don’t think there is much around with that employee size - and their solution provides user onboarding. In this video, their co-founder Esben shared what did they do to systemize their process.

My View:

• I worked for a similar solution before and I was impressed when I heard Userflow reached $4M ARR with 3 people in a short period of time. At SaaStock Dublin, they shared that they have been generating traffic mainly through Google Ads and SEO.

2- Wilson is one of the co-founders of senja.io. On the thread he shared, he mentioned his lessons that he took from their bootstrapping journey. At the moment their MRR is $7.4K. Don’t forget to check the comments.

My View:

• I really like how Wilson is transparent here. Some developers don’t know how to grow the product and Wilson seems like a that kind of guy. When his friend Oliver reached him to be a co-founder for the project, he accepted and they grew their project together. In cases like this, it is good to know what are your expertises.

3- Melissa Kwan is an experienced saas bootstrapper and she is also the host of ProfitLed Podcast.

On her LinkedIn post, she defined a new term named “purple ocean” which is something related to focusing on a specific niche.

My View:

• This is what I mostly like about SaaS bootstrappers. If they define their positioning clearly, they can reach the potential audience in that market. At the moment, most companies start to focus on a specific niche in a red ocean. For example, the tool that I have been using Beehiiv is another newsletter platform. They are not the only one and most of the people know Mailchimp in this space. But Beehiiv has been focusing on creators only and they tailored their messaging for those.

• What I would like to say is, bootstrappers can focus on the specific niche of a huge companies like; Hubspot for __, Mailchimp for , Shopify for __.

4- Dirk Sahlmer has been working for saas.group which acquires mainly bootstrapped companies and at the moment they have 16 companies on their portfolio.

Dirk is also running a newsletter named saasfyi and has been sharing industry trends and insights about funding, scaling and exiting.

On his latest newsletter issue, he gave details about the math behind the bootstrapper friendly investors like TinySeed and Calm Company Fund.

Here is the link to the issue.

My View:

• Those kind of VC companies may increase in the coming years. In some countries, government give a grant to entrepreneurs and it’s like a main investment. However, in the developing countries; solopreneurs need that small amount of money to build their products.

5- Who doesn’t like AMA sessions? The co-founder of a bootstrapped AI tool replied most of the questions he had on Reddit. If you have questions about AI SaaS startups on your mind, this post is for you.

Here is the link to the AMA session.

My View:

• As it’s a growing market, I was questioning about the churn rate and the co-founder replied me like this:

Bonus:

• Arvid Kahl guested very well-known Pieter Levels on his channel and this hits a view record on his channel. I totally recommend you to watch this to understand the costs of bootstrapped AI startups and the rising trend of TikTok. In order to get more details about how an AI startup can use AI to get more traffic, you can check this account.

See you on Sunday for the interview of Lukas Hermann.

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