This document provides advice on building a side project into a profitable business by starting small and focusing on customer needs. It recommends choosing a product that solves a problem people will pay for, requires minimal users to be useful, and has existing competition. The document also discusses how to make time for side projects, manage growth while keeping an existing job, use small iterative releases, and market the product through content, sponsorships and paid ads targeted at relevant communities. The overall message is to focus on solving customer problems over features and valuing steady progress over rapid growth.

1. We’re not
“doing a startup”
How to cut through the hype and build your side
project into a profitable business.
Rachel Andrew, Topconf 2016

3. G.K. Chesterton
“I owe my success to having listened respectfully
to the very best advice, and then going away and
doing the exact opposite.”

4. This is a marathon, not a 5K.

6. It’s not about the money
(until it is)

7. Getting started
Choosing the perfect product to
bootstrap as a side-project.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/joeshlabotnik/7276841268

8. Walt Disney
“The way to get started is to quit talking and
start doing.”

9. • for your own community
• that you can ship quickly
• that solves a problem people will pay to have solved
• that does not need a lot of traction to be useful
• that has existing competition
A product ...

10. A product for your own community
https://www.flickr.com/photos/drewm

11. Amy Hoy
“Are you a Ruby developer? Then serve Ruby
developers. Are you a UX designer? Serve UX
designers.”

12. The worst that could have happened with
Perch? No-one would want it but we’d have a
useful tool for our business.

13. With a track record in a community you will
already have trust.

14. A product you can ship quickly
http://freekvanarkel.nl

15. John Radoff
“The goal of a startup is to find the sweet-spot
where minimum product and viable product meet
– get people to fall in love with you.”

16. To launch with a small product, you need to find
a problem that can be solved with a small
product.

17. Perch v.1
• A simple content editor
• No way to add new pages
• No API
• Images could be uploaded - but not resized

18. The Problem
Client requests that an already developed static
site be made editable via a CMS.

19. The Solution
A simple CMS that turned static pages into
editable pages by way of dropping in a couple of
PHP tags.

20. A product that solves a problem that people will
pay to have solved
https://www.flickr.com/photos/futureshape/

21. If you can save a business time they will see the
value in paying for your product.

22. Bootstrapped With Kids, Episode 31
“We think their workflow sucks, but they like it…”

23. Our target market for Perch was designers and
agencies. We aimed to save them time on
smaller projects.

24. Feedback from paying customers trumps
feedback from free users.
Every time.

25. A product that does not need a lot of users to be
useful
https://www.flickr.com/photos/22746515@N02/

26. “Social” or “community” products need a large
user base to succeed.

27. Choose a product that is as useful to customer
#1 as customer #1000

28. A product that has competition

29. Perch competitors at launch
• WordPress
• ExpressionEngine
• CushyCMS
• PageLime
• Joomla
• Drupal

30. What problem is your competition NOT solving?
Build it.

31. New concepts will require you to educate
potential customers as to why they even need
your product.

32. Finding the time
How to make time for
side-projects.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/mybigtrip/6111406

33. Malcolm S. Forbes
“One worthwhile task carried to a successful
conclusion is worth half-a-hundred half-finished
tasks.”

34. Sir John Lubbock
“In truth, people can generally make time for
what they choose to do; it is not really the time
but the will that is lacking.”

35. Get set up to be able to pick up and work on
your side-project quickly - whenever the time is
available.

36. Your product must be a first-class citizen
alongside your other work.

37. Set aside time and plan in advance what you will
do with it

38. Diana Scharf Hunt
“Goals are dreams with deadlines”

39. There is power in setting a goal, writing it down,
putting a date on it

40. How to get started
• Choose your goal
• Define what it is you are going to create
• Put a date on it.

41. Brian Casel
http://casjam.com/the-cascading-to-do-list-or-how-to-get-big-things-done/
“In a nutshell, the idea is to start with the end-
goal in mind, then divide it into smaller and
smaller increments. Plan all of the actions in
detail beforehand, then get to work.”

42. Be realistic about how much you can achieve.
Feeling as if you are falling behind can
demotivate you.

43. If there is not enough time ...
• Either revise your end date
• Or, remove elements of the project - pushing them into a
post-launch phase.

44. Be ruthless in cutting features that can be
added post-launch

45. The “missing” features at launch will seem far
more important to you than to your customers.

46. Describe the product as it is now.
Sell the solution.

47. • Start Small
• Get feedback from paying customers
• Improve and add to your product based on
their needs balanced by your vision.

48. Minimum Viable Infrastructures

49. Own Your Own Data

50. Launch and
beyond
Managing a growing side-project
alongside an existing job or
business.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasamarshall

51. Winston Churchill
“Now this is not the end. It is not even the
beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of
the beginning.”

52. • We launched Perch at the end of May 2009
• At launch we were still 100% booked out on client
projects
• Income from Perch was initially reinvested into Perch
• January 2013 we made the decision to stop taking on new
client work
Our timeline

53. A successful side-project should be
given more time as it represents a
higher % of your income.

54. Not making a profit?
• Are you pricing too cheaply?
• Are you reliant on expensive services?
• Are you attracting customers who need a lot of support?

55. The slower growth curve of
bootstrapped products gives you time
to fix problems before they become
BIG problems.

56. Never promise a specific timeframe to
customers

57. When your product is a side-project you have
even more things that could cause you to push
back a feature.

58. We don’t publish a roadmap
• It allows us to be flexible and react to customer needs and
changing trends in web design.
• It means that customers are not relying on the launch of
feature X in order to complete a project.
• It means that we can hold back a feature until we are
absolutely sure it won’t cause anyone a problem.

59. Use Cases not Feature Requests

60. Find general solutions that will benefit
many customers rather than adding
very specific features

61. Understanding the problem means we
can help the customer now and
optimize the solution later.

62. Delight customers by solving their
problems and letting them know when
you have done so

63. Protect the Core Use Case

64. Beware adding things just because
they “make good demo”

65. Your product will benefit by being owned by
someone who will say no.

66. Make Frequent Small Releases

67. Small releases
• Fewer changes = fewer things to go wrong
• Easier to isolate the issue if a problem does occur
• Get features to customers more quickly
• For our customers, less of a dramatic change that they
need to communicate to their clients

68. Semantic Versioning assumes:
major.minor.patch

69. Progressive versioning
major.minor.progress

70. http://allinthehead.com/retro/373/
progressive-versioning

71. Don’t be led by a noisy minority

72. Seek out the opinion of those
customers you never hear from. The
happy majority are often silent.

73. Marketing
How to tell people about your
product, when you have no money to
burn.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/brent_nashville/5284764031/

74. Seth Godin
“Marketing is no longer about the stuff that you
make, but about the stories you tell.”

75. You have made something that
genuinely solves a problem. Go tell
people about it!

76. Pre-launch of Perch
• A month before we put up a landing page and email
signup form
• About 500 people signed up
• We emailed the list on launch and those people
represented enough sales on launch day to pay back all
pre-launch costs.

77. Your reach will give you your initial
customers. Then what?

78. Content Marketing

79. Write blog posts and articles on the
things your potential customer is
interested in, not about your product.

80. Sponsorship

81. Sponsoring podcasts can be inexpensive and
a great way to have someone influential talk
about your product for a few minutes.

82. Paid Advertising

83. If you cannot track it do not pay for it

84. Target the “long tail” keywords

85. Research smaller sites visited by your
ideal customer, advertise on those
less expensive sites.

89. Create your own definition of success

90. Revenue that is not worth chasing for
a 60 person business can be life-
changing for the solo founder.

91. Is the grass greener on the product
side?

92. The work is always worth it.

93. Thank you
Rachel Andrew
@rachelandrew
http://rachelandrew.co.uk/presentations/not-doing-a-startup