Hey folks, I built this as a side project as I couldn't see a list of privacy-focussed tools specifically aimed at startups (rather than consumers).
The project has languished a bit recently as my focus has been taken up elsewhere, so if you like it feel free to hit me up at fred[at]hey[dot]com. I'm open to collabs/acquisition.
It's what I tried to capture in the post, but probably could have put better.
The sense of just taking the steps I can today, rather than burdening myself with the expectation of needing to have worked it all out and achieved all of my comparison-driven life goals.
The key is to find healthy rhythms that help us continue to better ourselves over time.
The other key difference here as far as I understand, is that Telnic required you to register .tel domains, you couldn't bring your own domain and store contact information against that.
For the past few months Barry (https://twitter.com/pace) & I have been talking to a bunch of young'uns about their news habits and one thing that keeps coming up is that people are overwhelmed with the news, and in particular, they're sick and tired of Brexit. So tired, they've switched off.
So, why are we providing more Brexit commentary?
We believe context is important, that our democracies need us all to be informed and engaged. Brexit is the defining issue of our time (at least this side of the pond) and so if anything deserves some extra effort, it's this.
But context, though vital, must be given in the right package.
By slicing it into 5 bite-size, interactive chunks (~3 min read time each), we hope to be able to clear some of the fog surrounding Brexit to help play our part in our nation moving forwards with clarity and purpose.
We hope you enjoy this short-series, but whether you do or don't, we'd love your feedback. We'll be hanging out in the comments here most of today ️
A point of clarification that didn’t make the article: we’ve not technically raised VC funding yet, we’re in an incubator. But we’ve effectively raised an initial round via our budget, and are on the path to raise our first round proper.
I agree with the rough sentiment of what you’re saying but think it’s a slightly too narrow point of view. Joining an incubator or accelerator helps minimise downside whilst in the process of figuring out the problem space and whether your hypothesis have legs. Sure, you can do this as a side hustle first and that’s great too, but as I say in the article, it depends on your circumstances.
I’m not raising money specifically because of personal life challenges, deciding to raise only came after making the big life adjustments. It’s my belief that raising can sometimes be less pressurised than bootstrapping, though admittedly most startup founders don’t live it out that way. We’ve got our beliefs based on what we know and our experience so far, I look forward to walking it all out and reporting back on what I learn.
Hey ausjke. Sounds tough, but congrats on getting this far. I'm not best placed to give advice here, and might need more context to do so properly anyway. I know a good group for bootstrappers, if you want the details my DM's are open on twitter (https://twitter.com/fredrivett).
That specific point was that people often start a business because they want the freedom of not having a boss, but in many ways you always have someone you're serving, be it a boss or a customer.
The wider point was: both bootstrapping and VC funding are good options, depending on your specific circumstances and goals at the time. One isn't objectively better than the other.
I agree bootstrapping itself wasn't the problem. The problem was that I felt my focus on building a business on the side of my day job limiting to what I could do next. At the start of the year I decided the healthiest thing for me to do was to start from a clean slate and bed down somewhere. I wasn't sure where, but London is where I ended up.
I realise there are much more sane ways to live our lives than a startup, bootstrapped or funded. I agree it takes a lot of personal sacrifice too, mentally more than anything.
I realise my path looks strange, going from "I need more time to focus on things outside of work" to "I'm starting a startup", and it was never my plan when I came back. It was only 4 months after returning that the opportunity came up and it was the best fit for me at the time.
I may be too naive, but both myself and my co-founder believe that working excessive hours isn't a necessity to make a startup succeed. Sure there are times when you need to work longer in short periods to get something over the line, but the idea that being on the brink of burnout gives the best odds of success goes against what I've read about how the human mind works, and my experience too.
Appreciate your thoughts here Dave, agree with what you say. A quick point of clarification on my situation (author of the post), I didn't take a failing bootstrapped company and get it funding. I stepped away entirely from the bootstrapped work I was doing, for personal reasons (to focus on things other than working all the time), and then an entirely separate opportunity came up to start a startup with funding, which I took because of the autonomy (mostly self-directed work), mastery (learning a tonne in a role I've never done before, alongside super smart people) and purpose (creating a company culture that isn't "crush it" startup bro style + attempting to help the news industry adjust to today's culture).
Hope that makes sense, just wanted to clarify that.
I would say you gain different* experiences, not necessarily more valuable. It depends on your circumstances and your goals. Hopefully my perspective on that came through in the post.
You're right on the 10x being low asprouse, I probably shouldn't have included that.
Agree Tiny Seed looks interesting, I actually recommended someone that earlier this afternoon. Great to see new takes on funding businesses and I'm excited to see what it can unlock for those who need a little boost but don't want to chase the unicorn.
Lost and founder is already on my Audible wishlist, expect to get to it in the next month after finishing Scott Belsky's Messy Middle.[0]
Hey [redacted], thanks for the thoughtful comments here.
> One thing that is undeniable is that a bootstrap will always leave you in control at the end of the day.
I agree bootstrapping gives you more say over which way you take the business, and hopefully that came across in my post (although I only mentioned it briefly).
> I think a product should not be made for the potential profit it could amass but to fill a need for these users, listening to them feels like the next logical step to take (and most companies, even tremendously giant ones, still fail to do this I feel like).
I agree we should be motivated by more than money. As I mention in the post, money is a bad master but a great servant. We need money to serve us, so we can feed our families and keep the lights on, but money itself shouldn't be the goal. I realise when taking funding this confuses the matter, as now you're not just responsible for your family, but for providing a return to your investors. I still believe it's possible to be mission-driven having taken funding, but understand it can complicate the matter.
> Even more important than that is that it might not be the next unicorn, but that is absolutely fine for some people. They just want enough to feed themselves and their families while having a sane work life/rhythm of say 4-5 hours a day once you get it rolling.
I agree the end goal for us is often spending time with those we love, whilst having that sense of purpose I mentioned in the post. We all want to leave some impact on the world, maybe that's a partner or children who know we loved them, maybe it's a few hundred paying customers who love your product, maybe it's some big swing towards a big dent in the world.
My co-founder and I are relatively counter-cultural in the startup world, admittedly it's early days, but we don't work crazy hours as our belief is that the long hours are often busy work, not important work. If we can look after ourselves, not get burnt out, make wise decisions from a place of rest and do important deep work regularly, we believe we can outcompete any startup bro culture that works 80+ hour weeks.
> I feel like the author used to somewhat adhere to this moto but somewhere along the way got lost and is now simply after the money for the sake of it.
I don't believe that's the case, personally. My current wage is half that of 2 other contracting roles I was offered at the same time as this gig. I'm fully aware the vast majority of startups fail, so I'll very likely be out of pocket. I took the role as I admire my co-founder and wanted to learn from his product skills, an area I realised I needed to grow in.
Before taking this role I used to work a full-time job, come home in the evenings and work on my side-hustle. For 3 years it meant I didn't really have a life outside of the day job and the side hustle. Now I normally work 8-4, home by 5 and have the evening to meet friends or relax. People often think taking funding means having less work/life balance, right now for me it's the opposite (again, caveat we're early days).
It gets messy. As are all startups to one extent or another. You ride out the highs and lows and keep moving forwards. I wasn't trying to say that going the VC route is necessarily easier or better (I hope I made that clear), just that there are different upsides and downsides to each, one isn't objectively better than the other.
> When you take VC, you've just hired yourself a board full of bosses.
Agree taking funding brings back an element of having a boss again Alan. It's certainly a trade-off of the VC route, and one of the main reasons I haven't taken funding before.
That said, I still think you get a good amount of autonomy by (co-)founding a startup, as you're often free to execute how you choose, but with the agreement that you'll pursue a path that can give an outsized return for your investors. Investors rarely want to dictate what and how you do things, in my experience.
> When does that ever stop being true?
Again I agree it doesn't, but it's something many bootstrappers don't quite understand when starting out (I didn't way back when), and I think is a point worth noting.
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Happy to make edits if there's ways I can clarify this better. Gotta ship something before EOP today but will revisit the article tonight.
Will deffo try this out.