How I bootstrapped a $40m company - Epic failures, successes, and heartaches

How I bootstrapped a $40m company overnight, and by overnight, I mean it took 11 YEARS and I SURE AS HELL didn’t build it by myself. Here’s my story, my epic failures, the successes, and the heartaches. 2010: I was 22 and worked at an engineering firm as

How I launched my first SaaS and how it failed miserably

About two years ago, I had this “million dollar” idea of a SaaS. I’ve built it, launched it and failed miserably. Here is what happened. The idea The idea was simple. A wedding RSVP platform that allows users to create a landing page for their wedding then either send

If only someone told me this before my 1st startup

1. Validate idea first. I wasted at least 5 years building stuff nobody needed. 2. Kill your EGO. It's not about me, but the user. I must want what the user wants, not what I want. 3. Don't chaise investors, chase users, and then investors will be chasing you. 4.

I lost $300k on a project: 3 lessons I learned

My name is Igor, I'm 27 years old, I'm from Ukraine. I invested $300k in the project and closed it without earning anything. What did we do? In 2019 we made “Uber for plumbers.” Is your pipe leaking? Leave a request and the master will be there in 20 minutes.

We Failed Such A Great idea

7 years ago, we started a startup to challenge Carta, we raised $1M, got our first 100 users, and tons of optimism. 6 years later we went bankrupt. In 2017 I was playing cageball in Oslo when I met my old friend, who said he just started a new startup,

Don't Set Out to Make Money

It's very easy to get lost in day dreams of fancy cars, big houses, exotic places, and expensive things. How many of you think about products you can sell or services you can offer that will make a lot of money? Why not? If you can sell something or provide

How to change your mindset from coder to entrepreneur in 9 steps

These are the 9 steps I’ve learned on how to become profitable as an entrepreneur who was previously a software engineer at Microsoft. The process reminds me of writing efficient code: 1. CODE: Understand the requirements ENTREPRENEUR: Understand your offer and targets 2. CODE: Strategize solutions given the available

The 48 Laws of Power

Law 1 - Never Outshine the Master Always make those above you feel comfortably superior. In your desire to please or impress them, do not go too far in displaying your talents or you might accomplish the opposite – inspire fear and insecurity. Make your masters appear more brilliant than they

A Guide to Being a Winner

I've been in this business for years, long enough to see people fail or succeed and draw my own conclusions as to why. I have friends who made fortunes in this business and others who basically flopped and played with IM like a hobby. Everyone wants to be a winner,

5 Lessons I learned from selling over 1800 copies of software.

So I was feeling nostalgic. I decided to go through some of my old stuff. Then, I remembered when I used to write scripts for sale. I looked at my vendor dashboard to ponder about "the good old days." Then, I looked at the number of copies sold. The number

How to Scale a Business

A comical analogy... Have you ever wondered what people mean by "scaling" a business? They say once you find a method to make money you need to scale it to make more money. I offer below a clearer example everyone could relate to. Take for example the street beggar. I

The Road to Freedom

Does anyone else want to be an entrepreneur only because you find the idea of being an employee disgusting? It bothers me to my core to be someone's subordinate. Call me narcissistic or worse, but it's just how I feel. I'm actually humble and nice towards others. I definitely don't