The Bootstrapped Founder
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Learn more about how to start, run and sell a bootstrapped SaaS company without burning out. I'm Arvid. I empower founders & creators who want to build calm & sustainable businesses in public.
The Bootstrapped Founder
6d ago
Reading Time: 11 minutes “I didn’t see it coming.” I had to admit that to myself a few times recently. Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been experiencing several issues with Podscan that only came to pass because I didn’t really have any observability on my system. At least that’s what I know now. Because it always takes ..read more
The Bootstrapped Founder
2w ago
Reading Time: 15 minutes As a software entrepreneur wearing many hats – from coding to marketing to customer service – I’ve found AI systems to be game-changing tools in my daily work. Today, I want to share how I use these systems, particularly large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude, to —hopefully— inspire you to benefit from similar ..read more
The Bootstrapped Founder
3w ago
Reading Time: 7 minutes As founders, we often focus on scaling our businesses in terms of customers, revenue, or team size. But what happens when the data your business relies on scales faster than anything else? That’s the challenge I very recently faced with Podscan.fm, and it nearly brought the entire system to its knees. Nearly! ? If you’re ..read more
The Bootstrapped Founder
1M ago
Reading Time: 4 minutes With my podcast data scanning business, Podscan, I’m constantly scraping the web for terabytes of audio and metadata – but now I find myself in a wild cat-and-mouse game, trying to protect my own valuable data from aggressive AI companies doing the exact same thing. It’s a bizarre tightrope walk: I need data to be ..read more
The Bootstrapped Founder
1M ago
Reading Time: 4 minutes Should software founders attend tech conferences? The answer is a resounding yes. If you’d asked me five years ago, I’d have completely disagreed. So today, I’ll share my journey from skepticism to enthusiasm about tech conferences — how they can be invaluable for entrepreneurs in ways that go far beyond just keeping up with the ..read more
The Bootstrapped Founder
1M ago
Reading Time: 30 minutes Andrew Davies (@andjdavies) runs marketing for Paddle, the payment provider that powers several of my businesses. They also recently ran an AI launchpad accelerator, which massively impacted the trajectory of my business, Podscan. It’s about time we chat more about money on the pod. Today, I get to talk to Andrew about all things payment, why ..read more
The Bootstrapped Founder
1M ago
Reading Time: 8 minutes Just a few years ago, I was a wholly different coder. At my best, I was breezing through documentation and writing mostly functional code. At my worst, I’d be chasing typos and strange bugs for hours, to no avail. Not once would I have thought of using AI to help me — because it didn’t ..read more
The Bootstrapped Founder
1M ago
Reading Time: 3 minutes Earlier this week, I came across a quote that resonated deeply with me: “I can accomplish anything, but I won’t really be worthy until I accomplish the next big thing.” This sentiment, shared in a Hacker News conversation about similarities between founders, got me thinking about the self-limiting beliefs we entrepreneurs often grapple with, especially ..read more
The Bootstrapped Founder
2M ago
Reading Time: 6 minutes I recently came across a tweet by Nikita Bier about onboarding in software products that made me reflect on my own choices for the first touches that my customers have with my product. It also got me thinking about the general expectations we have for software products we use for all kinds of purposes. In ..read more
The Bootstrapped Founder
2M ago
Reading Time: 7 minutes I ran into a pretty substantial question this week. Am I working in my business, or am I working on my business? I’ve been spending so much time building features, talking to customers, implementing fixes, dealing with infrastructure problems, and even trying to upgrade the product design. All of this is still working in the ..read more