I'm not sure if Constant Contact's "long slow SaaS ramp of death" story is applicable to bootstrappers. - $107 Million IPO in 2007. - Spearheaded a brand new category for SMBs (email marketing). - Acquisition was largely done through radio + Chamber of Commerce presentations
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Almost every endeavor will have "the dip," where your initial enthusiasm wears off, and the going gets tough. It's probably a better rubric for bootstrappers; especially since Godin talks a lot about the importance of quitting. Not everything is worth a slow slog.pic.twitter.com/brmn59lQbb
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The risk of adopting the "slow ramp of death" mindset is that "the world is full of people with 3-year-old 'side startups;' 99% of which will never work." (Jason Coen) "Long slow ramp" can't mean "5+ years of trying to hit $10k MRR" for most founders.https://twitter.com/asmartbear/status/1069939899044847622?s=20 …
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Good point by
@ianlandsman: "When that talk came out, this was a new idea ('building a subscription business takes time to ramp up'). These days, it's a given. Most founders know that if you start at $30 in MRR, it's going to take a while to hit scale."
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Also
@ianlandsman: "At the time, this idea ('long slow SaaS ramp') was especially helpful for founders who had previously sold installable software, where you get the revenue up-front. We weren't used to revenue taking so long to scale."Pokaż ten wątek -
Good point by Tyler here as well: the danger, these days, is "if you don't see a fast-ish ramp, the odds of success go way down."https://twitter.com/tylertringas/status/1366502084321964037 …
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Here are some reasonable questions to ask, which never really get addressed by "Long, slow, SaaS ramp of death." - How long are we talking about? 5 years? 10 years? - How slow is too slow? - If scale needed is small, how is ramp affected? - How do you know when you should quit?
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Anyway, I think this kind of questioning is helpful. In the science community, they regularly re-examine old ideas, challenge their beliefs, and stress-test theories. We need this in bootstrapping too! It's good to look critically at our axioms and ask if they're still useful.
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building
"We achieved profitability at 15,000 customers. Problem was, it took $21 million of capital to get to that." 
to
July: $9K MRR

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