(2015-03-26) Stairstep Bootstrapping

Rob Walling started to notice a pattern emerging among the pool of bootstrappers (BootStrapping) who were able to successfully replace their income, buy back their time, and quit their jobs... I call it The StairStep Approach...

Step 1: Your First Product

The strategy that seems to give people the best chance of success is creating a simple product, with a simple marketing plan – that means a one-time sale product, with a single traffic channel. Specifically, I’m suggesting that you don’t get started with a subscription SaaS model... It’s much easier to sell a standalone product like a Word Press plugin or a Magento add-on – they’re relatively inexpensive and the customers “owns” them forever, so they don’t have to worry about mounting costs over time or “throwing money away” on something they can’t keep. Other examples of one-time-sale products might be a Shopify app, a Drupal add-on, a Photoshop plugin, or an EBook (Info Product).

Step 2: Rinse and Repeat

Take a look at what made that product a success and repeat it... focus on replicating the same type of product with another angle or in another market, maybe more than once.

So in Steps 1 and 2 I see people succeeding by sticking to free traffic channels (typically organic or viral), sticking to the first one that works for you, growing it until it plateaus, and focusing on replacing your income by repeating this with multiple products... None of my early projects were particularly glamorous, but when I stacked them together I built enough product income to buy out 100% of my time and quit consulting.

Step 3: Recurring Revenue (SaaS)

I don’t think HitTail or Drip would have taken off if they were my first projects – I don’t know that I would have had the time, money, skills, or confidence to give them what they needed to succeed.

Amy Hoy's framing of this is even better, where sticking with a single market means that each step is Customer Discovery for the next.