The Epic Guide to Bootstrapping a Startup By Yourself Book

Preorder The Epic Guide today and get:

The Epic Guide in all popular digital e-book formats—PDF, EPUB, Mobi (Kindle and iBooks supported).
Early access to chapters as they're completed—no need to wait months in order to get started!
Discounted physical copies of the book when it's fully complete and ready to print.
And of course: The straightforward, battle-tested, pragmatic guidance you need in order to successfully build your startup—by yourself.

I know you're going to love what I've put together, but if you're unhappy for any reason there's no need to worry—I'll refund your purchase in full.

Don't waste years of your life trying to build a startup
—and never get it off the ground.

If you're a developer like me, you've probably dreamed of building a startup for years.

Whether you're just thinking about building a startup today—or you've actually made a go for it and have fallen flat on your face—you should know that I feel for you.

Maybe you're looking to start a side project that can kick off some extra money every month. Or maybe you just can't stand working for someone else and dream of nothing but freedom and independence from a soul-sucking day job.

If you've been struggling to convince yourself to take that first step, or you've been slinging code for years on nights and weekends with nothing to show for it—I want you to know that I've been there, too.

It fucking sucks—seriously. It's not just you. I failed at this game for years. I've read countless startup books and started more projects than I even care to remember.

But guess what? After years of getting hardly any sleep at all, beating myself up, and constantly feeling like a failure—I found a way out.

And that's why I want you to know that you don't need to spend the rest of your life as a sorry, snivelling, frustrated, sorry wantrapreneur.

Unlike any other startup book you've ever read—guaranteed.

Just epic... you should get a Nobel Prize for this.
–Satya van Heummen

If you're a fan of my popular Medium series The Epic Guide to Bootstrapping a SaaS Startup from Scratch—By Yourself

—which was a 2016 Top Medium Story and which held the #2 spot on Hacker News for 48 hours—you know that I don't hold back the punches when it comes to building a startup.

I'm not going to waste your time with fluff, filler, or cute little fucking anecdotal stories.

I'm going to kick your ass into gear, make you stop wasting your time on entreporn, and show you exactly how to go from nothing to something.

It took me over a decade to learn how to successfully get a startup off the ground. A large part of what held me back was trying to follow all of the "startup advice" out there being pandered by so-called startup gurus.

They make it look so easy, right? Like if you can't do what they do, that there must be something wrong with you?

Well it's not easy. And it's not your fault. Because pretty much everything they tell you about how they succeeded is not in fact how they succeeded.

I promised myself (nay—swore a holy oath) that once I figured this whole startup thing out that I'd free all the other captives and burn the place down on my way out. This book is the culmination of that promise.

Achieve more in the next 3 months than you have in the past 3 years.

I sent 10 emails over the last few days as an experiment to see if that could really work. I got two responses, and one of those turned into a heck yes. Holy shit! After years of wasting time coding stuff I never released while reading startup books, that was the most encouraged I’ve felt about actually doing something that might work.
–Jack

What if I told you that all of those startup blogs, podcasts, courses, and books you've been consuming are actually holding you back?

If you're actively consuming content that assumes you:

Automatically plan to go after Angel or VC funding
Are out to build a billion dollar company
Already know how to market, sell, and acquire customers
Work full-time on your startup and that it's your primary source of income
Have a revenue-generating company, a full-blown team, and are now looking for "growth"

You're wasting your time.

Because you'll never successfully bootstrap a company if you're trying to follow the funded or late-stage startup playbooks.

I promise you'll see more results in a matter of months than you've seen from years of following the other "startup advice" out there.

Why? Because I'll show you the techniques that actually work for bootstrappers.

And once you see it working, it will blow your mind. All those years of frustration? Gone. Just like that.

I'll show you how bootstrappers like me get startups off the ground and generating revenue as quickly as possible, including how to:

Choose a potentially winning startup idea
Test if you can successfully bring that idea to market
Turn your idea into a product in far less time than you think
Market and sell your product in the real world
Get your very first paying customer
Grow and retain your customer base
Find product-market fit

And not only that, but I'll be there with you through the pages to push you, motivate you, and keep your head straight as we tackle this shit together.

Finally get your startup off the ground.

Found Part 1 of your Epic Guide earlier today. Stopped while reading it to whiteboard out our value prop (and emailed the 3 part template to everyone on the team to get their individual takes as well).

Produced some great insight even though we have already launched, have revenue, etc.
–Steven

Make no mistake: This is not a book you're going to read cover-to-cover and put on your sad, sorry, overflowing bookshelf full of entreporn.

(I love Richard Branson as much as the next enterpreneur, but he's not gonna help you here.)

I'm aiming to make this the last book you ever buy or read about getting your startup off the ground—because we're going to do just that.

This book will go deeper and cover far more territory about building a startup than the Medium series does today. Starting with idea generation and going through all the steps needed to achieve "quit your job money", it can be used for building any software-based startup (not just SaaS, although of course that's covered in full).

You'll learn all of the business skills you're currently lacking—including those evil twins sales and marketing (which you'll come to love once I show you just how adorable they really are).

It's going to get real. It's going to get uncomfortable. Because I'm going to make you do shit. Because I'm going to make you succeed so long as you're willing to put in the work.

Yes, this shit works.

It's refreshing to hear somebody who's not afraid to go it alone and work their ass off.
–Landon Schropp

This is a process that I've refined after years of trying to get different startups off the ground.

I'm not going to claim that I've invented a whole new and novel approach to doing startups (although maybe I have).

Truth be told, I spent years seeking out and studying successful bootstrappers. I paid attention to what they said they did—but more importantly I watched what they did.

I took all of that information, analyzed it, tested it, synthesized it, and organized it. I found what worked reliably and what didn't. Then I turned that all into the process that I follow and that I outline in this book.

And guess what—it fucking works.

I'm not hoarding any "secret knowledge" that you need to buy this book to get. You can do the same thing I did and spend years studying and experimenting on your own, and maybe get there.

But if you're tired of playing games and want to stop wasting time taking wild shots that never pay off, you'll get there faster (and cheaper) with this book in hand.

(Think about it: For less than the cost of taking me out to dinner to pick my brain about one topic, you can get an entire book on everything I know about bootstrapping. Pretty simple, right?)

So if you're ready to put to bed all those years of frustration, anxiety, and failure—and finally become the entrepreneur you know you're meant to be—let me show you how to get there.

This is the book I wish I had ten years ago. It literally would have saved me years of my life. Don't slog through years of your life with nothing to show for it. Let me show you how to turn your startup dreams into reality today.

Preorder Today And Get Early Access!

Ready for download today:

Part I: Get your head straight
- 1. The geek have inherited the earth
- 2. Why do you want to build a startup?
- 3. If you love writing code, you're going to hate running a software business
- 4. You aren't the next Facebook
- 5. Lose your startup religion
- 6. Why haven't you done this already?
- 7. The bootstrapping philosophy
- 8. Riding solo
- 9. What to do about the "day job"
- 10. Emotions are the enemies of success
- 11. Find the time. Put in the time.
Part II: Understanding the lay of the land
- 12. Here there be treasure
- 13. Abandon all ideas, ye who enter here
- 14. Charting the markets
- 15. Observe and infiltrate
- 16. "Brainstorming"
- 17. Testing the waters
- 18. Making the natives restless
- 19. Test kitchens and taste testings
- 20. Establishing a trading post
- 21. Bailing water
- 22. Manifest destiny
- 23. The Rule of 20

(Over 200 pages of tasty startup truth sandwiches!)

The Epic Guide is currently planned to be released in the summer of 2018—but if you preorder today, you'll get:

The Epic Guide in all popular digital e-book formats—PDF, EPUB, Mobi (Kindle and iBooks supported).
Early access to chapters as they're completed—no need to wait months in order to get started!
Discounted physical copies of the book when it's fully complete and ready to print.
And of course: The straightforward, battle-tested, pragmatic guidance you need in order to successfully build your startup—by yourself.