I started out 6-8 months ago by reading through HN and being introduced to the entire idea of bootstrapping. We had an idea that was partly technical, but mostly good marketing (e.g. closer to the idea of the parrot book: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=516215)
In fact, there are sites that sell wholesale kits for the technical part of the company.
We didn't buy a kit though and took the high road of building all our software in house using hired talent. Most of the work was done through freelancers at under a $3000 budget. (We would not do this again, the code quality on first run was incredibly low and hiring better is definitely worth it).
Getting the marketing working took another few thousands, but all said and done, we got it running with under $10k investment.
What was especially hard for bootstrapping for me was that I'm not a very technical guy. Most bootstrapping ideas here require you to be the engineer, but I didn't have the privilege of that position. I had to pull off a Derek Siver (http://sivers.org/how2hire) to get the idea to work.
Now that it is running though, it's doing great. We're pulling in over $100k of profits on an annualized basis, enough to cover living costs and more for sure.
As an aside, the roadblock we're running into now is that user demands are outstripping my current system of hiring freelancers. I've posted another thread asking for hiring help if anyone has experience: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1932131
Anyway, it's been a really fun ride, and I want to tell everyone that it really can be done. Your idea needs to be creative, and you need to be in a space where bootstrapping is possible (e.g. NOT biotech). The biggest lesson is to have good judgment. While investors are often a burden, they add a lot of experience for real, and with bootstrapping, sometimes you're left completely on your own.
In fact, there are sites that sell wholesale kits for the technical part of the company.
We didn't buy a kit though and took the high road of building all our software in house using hired talent. Most of the work was done through freelancers at under a $3000 budget. (We would not do this again, the code quality on first run was incredibly low and hiring better is definitely worth it).
Getting the marketing working took another few thousands, but all said and done, we got it running with under $10k investment.
What was especially hard for bootstrapping for me was that I'm not a very technical guy. Most bootstrapping ideas here require you to be the engineer, but I didn't have the privilege of that position. I had to pull off a Derek Siver (http://sivers.org/how2hire) to get the idea to work.
Now that it is running though, it's doing great. We're pulling in over $100k of profits on an annualized basis, enough to cover living costs and more for sure.
As an aside, the roadblock we're running into now is that user demands are outstripping my current system of hiring freelancers. I've posted another thread asking for hiring help if anyone has experience: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1932131
Anyway, it's been a really fun ride, and I want to tell everyone that it really can be done. Your idea needs to be creative, and you need to be in a space where bootstrapping is possible (e.g. NOT biotech). The biggest lesson is to have good judgment. While investors are often a burden, they add a lot of experience for real, and with bootstrapping, sometimes you're left completely on your own.