Program Director here — we're over the moon about the raise and excited about backing 100+ startups over the next three years. Happy to answer any questions folks have about the program.
We invest $120k + $60k per founder and work with SaaS specifically (with most investments in B2B SaaS). A narrow focus means we’re able to tailor our mentor roster and program and provide more actionable and relevant advice. More info: https://tinyseed.com/faq
Probably, but we’d need to talk with the founders first. Hard to say without knowing the business/field, but we definitely anticipate competitors across batches as we’re growing quickly.
Really valuable insights; really shows how different independent SaaS is. For instance, 56% of founders are solo in indie SaaS, whereas a lot of traditional VC accelerators prefer (or require) at least two founders on a team.
It's tough to find two or more compatible and like minded people who can afford to make (effectively) zero money for an extended period of time. Having VC money makes it possible to support a bigger team from the outset with less financial risk to the founders. This may contribute to the bias towards single founders in bootstrapped companies.
I'm a solo SaaS founder and would absolutely love to have a partner but the few people I've discussed it with have not been able to tolerate the financial risk / lost opportunity cost.
I am a solo SAAS founder and I would say that other than the financial risk/lost opportunity cost, the major hurdle is finding someone ambitious and driven enough who is willing to slog it out with you. The drive, the ambition and will to do whatever it takes day in, day out is not that easy to find. Especially when you have to find others who may not feel the same about your brand/product/business.
Additionally, the demographics on slide 7 point to the majority of founders being over 30. This age group often coincides with a greater likelihood of having a partner, mortgage, children, etc. Thus the risk aversion for that group is likely also higher.
Finding 2+ people with the risk tolerance alone limiting, much less having a complementary skill set, interests, goals, etc.
I am such a person. I could afford to work for years without money thanks to my high net worth and investments in the tech sector, and have over a decade of software development experience in building robust web scale applications.
Unfortunately, most potential co-founders write me off when they discover I’m ethically challenged.
> most potential co-founders write me off when they discover I’m ethically challenged.
I would have loved to have come across this comment years ago. I was building a bit of awesome software that turned out to be "illegal" ("PayPal is a bank -- oh, you're a regulator? PayPal isn't a bank!" kind of illegal). It was really interesting, but my cofounder backed out once we ran into regulation designed to keep us out of the market. I wanted to keep going and pretend the regulation didn't exist/apply to us.
Perhaps time in prison? In the sense that people assume having gone to prison is a challenge to the default assumption of whether you are a good person.
> VC money makes it possible to support a bigger team from the outset
Yes. However, in practice, it is very rare to be able to raise money before the founding team has already been working on the business for a few months. Hence, by the time VCs put money into the company, most likely, the founders have already incurred their most significant financial risk.
And they say that growth has correlation with the number of founders (up to 3 founders), so it makes sense as for VCs growth is basically the only thing that matters, not so much for bootstrappers.
Really valuable insights — really shows how different independent SaaS is. For instance, 56% solo founders in indie SaaS when a lot of traditional VC accelerators prefer (or require) at least two.
Hey, Tracy here, program manager at TinySeed. Thanks for recommending us, the OP's business is right up our alley. Happy to chat any time if anyone has questions: tracy@tinyseed.com
Hey, author/illustrator here. Of course this pops up on HN while I'm on a transatlantic flight.
Thanks for all the nice comments!
I made this specifically for folks who've only used GUIs and are used to having a designed shell around everything they do. That's why I illustrated the windows — at the small expense of readability, the goofiness/friendliness makes the topic more fun and less intimidating.
As shazow mentioned, I'm working on specific Linux (very few changes) and Windows versions (including instructions on using the Linux subsystem), and hopefully doing others on topics like git and whatnot — same model as this one, no signup forms or payments. That said, I am looking for sponsors to help fund my time in making these. If you (or your company) is interested, send me an email at tracy@hellowebbooks.com :)
A nitpick, just in case you haven't noticed and would want to make the correction, in the text you say:
> In the example above, you see my username "limedaring", and my computer name, “Orion,”
but the examples say "username@computer".
Another nitpick, I wonder if readers might see the commands in uppercase and think that those should work too. I can imagine them seeing "command not found" when trying them out and not realize that it's because LS != ls to the shell.
Yet another, maybe it'd be a good idea to include `cp -r` and `cp -rv`. I don't know, it might add to the intimidation, but I imagine that's also a basic operation they'll want and miss when doing `cp dir/`.
Great work, by the way. CLIs are great and in many if not most cases far more powerful than GUIs, but they're often taken as old and useless by the general public because they were more prevalent back before GUIs were common. It's great to see something aimed to be more easily digestible for the general public. Maybe CLIs can get more appreciation this way.
Thanks for making this guide! I teach beginners how to use the command-line and I completely agree with your approach of mentioning its relation to Finder at the very start. Most students treat the shell as an entirely separate system with no relation to the GUI they're used to. Since your guide seems Mac focused (I didn't know about the trick with dragging the folder to get the path), I was surprised to see you not mention `open`. I tell students if they completely forget where they are in the system, run `open .` to get back to a friendly Finder.
One advantage of using illustrations is that they are more or less timeless as symbolic representations of the GUI. Novices can get distracted by screenshots that have minor differences from the OS versions between the author's and the readers'.
I wrote Hello Web App to teach Django + Python web app development by talking readers through creating a unique project (using a project template described in the tutorial): https://hellowebbooks.com/learn-django
If this were available right now, I would likely buy it! I am tasked with learning Django in the next couple of weeks.
This got me realizing that I usually purchase and consume tutorials on an as-needed basis and I usually want to start right away. I used to collect them but found it wasn’t very optimal because when I found the time to do the learning, I wanted something a little different. For what it’s worth, I don’t think your Kickstarter numbers would account for people like myself.
Right? I talked a bit in IndieHackers about this (https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/failing-to-find-a-dev...) — 2017 was our best year ever because I hired someone to manage the business (she's a part of the current team). Having someone make decisions who is excited and enthusiastic has been a major part in WL's current growth. I should have hired her way earlier.
It's been a fun, rocky, educational, stressful, and amazing few years, and I feel like it's time to pass it on to someone new.
I wrote this post with ALL the details (which are fun to read on their own, even if you're not interested in a weddings-based business). I hope you find it interesting!
