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Couldn’t agree more. I call this the cockroach principle Large markets attract VC-funded competitors and tech-giants. Bootstrapping only works if you your market is large enough for a small team to make a comfortable living, but small enough to not matter to giants

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Andrew Wilkinson

@awilkinson

Mar 30, 2021

10. Bootstrapping works best in uncompetitive spaces/niches or if you have an unfair advantage (a personal brand, unique customer acquisition channel, etc).

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Or you can counter-position your way into something that few want to touch! "Yes! We're building a task management app for divorced investment bankers ..."

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Oh wait, that's the cockroach principle by another name, isn't it? :P

3:33 AM · Mar 31, 2021TweetDeck

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Haha, aye! Though I love the divorced investment bankers example :D The way I had internalized this was “Cockroaches thrive in dark, dingy corners. Not in the bright open fields where unicorns tread”

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The biology pedant in me thinks cockroaches are an incorrect model. Each cockroach dies rather easily; they're only resilient at the species-level. Honey badgers (and mongooses) live in burrows, hard to kill, ferocious-when-needed, eat mostly scraps but sometime catch big game.

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