Bootstrap journey: episode 01
March 2018: Beginning my journey as an independent bootstrap maker
Michael Jackson once said that “a lot of people are so used to just seeing the outcome of work that they never see the side of the work you go through to produce the outcome.”
Transparency in startups (where companies share everything from revenue data to customer churn stats) isn’t a new concept and it’s certainly not one without controversy, where countless hyperbolised “rags to riches” stories designed sell the dream to unsuspecting people and life coaches charging $229 an hour to “find your best self” infest the web.
Side note: I have a particular disdain for the vast majority of life coaches (especially in the nomad world) where it isn’t uncommon for some to charge upwards of $20,000 for a 3-day retreat to “find your best self”. Pieter Levels, serial founder, doesn’t allow people to talk about life coaching in his NomadList forums— life coaching (teaches other people to scam).
Recently, Theranos CEO, Elizabeth Holmes, was charged with $700 million fraud, and fined just $500,000 in the mother of all transparency fuck ups in recent memory.
The scams, the bullshit, and the endless hyperbole almost stopped me from launching this series. But fuck em. I think it’s important to communicate my wins and losses with complete transparency, and replicate the open transparency seen at Buffer, Baremetrics and NomadList.
Austin Kleon, author of Show Your Work says that “human beings are interested in other human beings and what other human beings do. By sharing our process, we allow for the possibility of people having an ongoing connection with us and our work, which helps us move more of our product”.
This blog is something I wish I’d done years ago as a way to track my progress and educate people.
I will cover lessons from my own experiences, including my tests, my wins, and my fails, all backed up with real numbers.
It’s a view from the driver’s seat of building a fully bootstrapped business from scratch. Earned from lessons of our own making.
I’ll post an update every month, alongside regular articles about the stuff I’m learning on this journey (as a maker, nomad & mental health enthusiast).
A brief history
2006:
In 2006, I met Tim Slack at music college. Not a lot of work got done that year. We were preoccupied by drunken late night parties, cold sleepless nights cooped up in one of our shitty cars and playing sweaty gigs (to no more than 20 people) at the weekend.
6 years later we started Nativve.
2012:
Tim and I founded Nativve (a digital agency that specialises in launching new products for brands such as adidas, The North Face, Patagonia, Reebok and Levi’s) with a small team from a nice little office in Manchester, UK.
2015:
In 2015 we created Health Research UK, our second successful business, that helps the NHS, British Heart Foundation, Imperial College London and more deliver clinical trial patients for new drug testing.
2016:
And then in 2016, Unfake, a tech startup we founded, had to be closed down after I suffered 5 stress related seizures.
2017:
I tried to sort my head out in the 15 months proceeding my seizures but the hospital visits, ever-growing unhappiness and a lack of passion made it impossible for me to continue. In December 2017 I sold my shares in the business and my journey to become a bootstrapped (fully remote) maker began.
2 successful businesses, one epic failure and a modest exit, in the span of 6 years has changed my mindset about business and life. Materialism and arbitrary success metrics has given way to a purposeful work/life balance.
Pilotfish (2017-)
Pilotfish is a mental health startup for nomads dealing with loneliness, detachment, and depression.
I’m building it in partnership with professional psychotherapist David Downes, who before this founded a 100+ person IT startup, and Sam Applebee, Founder of digital agency Kickpush and tech social enterprise Super Global. I’m proud to call them business partners and they’re both pretty damn badass!
We’re also in talks with other remote companies and universities studying the effects of long-term travel.
What’s a pilot fish? It’s the only thing a shark won’t eat because it helps the shark. We’re the pilot fish. You’re the motherflippin’ shark.
What I’m working on: March 2018
Simplifying the site, the messaging & the offer. (getting rid of the non-essentials)
I have a tendency to fill websites with superfluous waffle in the early stages. I can’t help myself. That means I have to be critical about what’s essential and what isn’t, getting rid of the deadwood as quickly as possible.
This is still a work in progress but it’s certainly getting there. This next phase will see the site stripped down to focus solely on the content (podcast, blog, newsletter) with the product coming soon!
Right now, simple, no fluff. But still a work in progress:
Put up a welcome mat to collect more subs (inspired by The Hustle)
Do you subscribe to The Hustle? If not, go sign up now. I’ll wait.
Right, now you’re back you’ll notice some slight similarities between their landing page and the brand new welcome mat I just published on the Pilotfish website.
Similar layout, “inspired” but not stolen copy, and a very similar link to an example newsletter post in the subtitle. I love their layout, I wanted to create an ode to it, and here it is.
Side note: it’s fine to borrow elements of other people’s work. It’s what creativity is. Here’s our friend Austin Kleon again — “Whenever somebody asks me to draw a line between inspiration and rip-off, I can’t really do much better but send them this chart”
Next step will be to add a proper sign up form to the page. You’ll see that in next month’s update.
Launched NomadPledge
Sam came to me with the idea of creating a pledge for nomads to sign to look after their mental health. Suddenly we realised this would be a much more valuable way for someone (the subscribers) to sign up.
You enter the site to sign the pledge and submit your mental health tip. Once signed up you’ll receive weekly science-backed articles and podcasts from me and David.
This is the best way for us to keep the audience engaged before the product is ready. And seeing as we’re actually asking the audience to submit their tips, they’re basically helping us to build it.
We’re building a basic database in AirTable to store all of the data submitted to NomadPledge. This is a massive topic in itself and one I will cover soon.
Sam and I read a fantastic article by Simon Hørup Eskildsen about building a Minimum Viable Airtable for the first four steps in creating a Minimum Viable tech product. We were extremely inspired by Simon’s work and decided this was the best route to take.
Never heard of Airtable? It’s part spreadsheet, part database. Kinda like Google sheets on the kind of steroids that turn you into a Hulk Hogan lookalike.
Re-built podcast site, edited and launched new episodes.
A week ago Justin Jackson (MegaMaker) announced the upcoming launch of his new podcast software business, Transistor. I immediately spoke to him to find out more and he invited me to the beta list.
Transistor is basically an all-in-one podcast website (both front-end & back-end) that integrates nicely with your main website with the simple of option of using a sub-domain — glassbox.pilotfish.io or glassbox.transistor.fm.
Previously I’d been doing all of this shit myself so the product is a godsend. Here’s the Glassbox podcast site, hosted by Transistor.
Being interviewed on podcasts (that air soon)
I keep getting asked to guest on podcasts. I’m super grateful about that (I’m sorry I can’t do them all).
They air soon, so I’ll update you as soon as I can.
Every influencer and individual interested in producing content, building a brand, starting or growing a business, selling a product, service, or idea should learn how to start a podcast on iTunes, Soundcloud, Spotify, Sticher, iHeart Radio, Google Play, and any other platform offering the real estate. It’s a massively important space that I constantly get asked about. — Gary Vaynerchuk
So, yeah, podcasting is a damn important marketing tactic for right now. We’re ramping up our activity here, so watch this space.
Talking to coworking spaces (Hubud/KoHub) about talks
I’ve been interested in talking at coworking spaces for a long time now. Finally, those opportunities are coming, with a talk at Hubud (Bali) scheduled in for April and hopefully a talk at KoHub in Thailand before the end of March.
What better place to discuss the future of the product than with the very people we’re here to help.
