Comment by rexreed

2 months ago

YES! I want to find more stories like this. Where can I find Bootstrappers or seedstrappers who have successfully scaled their companies past a few million in revenue with very small teams?

7 comments

rexreed

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jwr  2 months ago

Why the "a few million in revenue" cutoff?

In a solo-bootstrapped business you don't need a few million (USD or EUR) in revenue to run a successful business and live a really good life. In fact, depending on where you mostly live, much less than a single million might be plenty.

  • rexreed  2 months ago

    I'm looking for companies that are small by intent, but also looking to scale sustainably and grow beyond the capabilities of a single person. There are a lot of small businesses / solopreneurs / freelancers who work enough to get by or do a few hundred $K as a salary replacement, but aren't looking to build anything bigger. A lot of those companies also go by the wayside when the founder retires, gets hired, or something happens. And there's already a lot of content and sources for those types of solopreneur / single founder freelancers / side hustle type businesses.

    I'm looking for the other stories of small teams scaling big. I'm basically separating side-hustles and solopreneurs as freelancers from a more sustainable business. Revenue is a cutoff as a way to differentiate, but doesn't have to be the only one.

    For sure however, a team of 5 doing $20M implies something significant is happening at scale versus a solopreneur making what would otherwise be salary-replacement level money. Nothing wrong with that, of course, I love solopreneurship. Just trying to find those other stories, which are much harder to find.

  • lurk2  2 months ago

    Revenue isn’t the correct metric for what the grandparent wants to measure to begin with.

steffoz  2 months ago

I know https://tinyteams.xyz/ but it's not specific to bootstrapped companies!

  • rexreed  2 months ago

    Yeah and a lot of these are small only temporarily. Many of these startups are following the grow-at-all-costs VC philosophy that doesn't optimize for small team size. So I'm trying to find those alternate stories. Much harder to find, so when I see the post like this of OP's, I get excited. Hard to find stories of teams that are small by intent, but looking to scale big.