Justin Jackson interviews Jason Cohen from WPengine about bootstrapping, and what it really takes to grow a company.

Product People

Justin Jackson

EP97 – Can you bootstrap a company on the side? (Part 1 with Jason Cohen)

DEC 14, 201832 MIN
Product People

EP97 – Can you bootstrap a company on the side? (Part 1 with Jason Cohen)

DEC 14, 201832 MIN

Description

When you're building a startup you have these questions:

  • Should I work on my startup on the side, and grow it slowly?
  • Should I take investment and go full-time sooner?

These are the questions that have been circulating in my head over the past few months.

Which is why when Jason Cohen, founder of WPengine and someone I respect, replied to my tweet, I took note:

"It’s difficult to find successful companies where founders didn’t work 80+ hours and took longer than four years to get to $1M ARR. If you're two years in and you still need a day job then by definition it doesn’t have good fundamentals. I usually think of "$10k/month/founder" as a rough measure of whether you're ready for full-time. Saying that should take three years is wrong. It's hard to find that companies that live and took that long."


Today we'll be digging into that! (Check back next week for Part 2)

★ Looking for community of bootstrappers?

Show notes

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