A product is not a business—just yet. That's an important thing to understand, particularly when you're a technical founder. It's the reason the book The E-Myth exists: the entrepreneurial myth is that if you build it, they will come.
But they won't unless you put in the effort to create a reliable system to sell the product at a profit continuously: a business.
A business is more than a landing page, a product, and a bank account. A business is a complex system of processes.
Building a product may come easy to you if you're technically inclined, but turning it into a value-generating machine is a whole different kind of challenge.
Others may have trouble coming up with the product but thrive on building the structures needed to sell it over and over again.
In the initial phase of starting your bootstrapped business, you may think you don't need processes just yet.
I argue that there are a few things that you should do strategically from the beginning, and turn future entrepreneurial actions into processes as soon as you can.
I realized this when I read Built to Sell by John Warrillow: a sellable business is a well-structured business.
Nobody wants to buy a business that isn't easy to run. But you don't actually ever need to sell your sellable business. You can enjoy the benefits of an easy-to-operate company and keep it for yourself.
Ever since I understood that an organized business is a sellable business, I have made every effort to build a well-documented business that my partner Danielle and I could run by ourselves or hand over to someone else at any point.
We eventually did that by selling the business after two years, but we could have just hired a few replacements and paid them to keep the business running.
Learn more about those choices, the consequences, and how we turned FeedbackPanda into a well-oiled business in my book Zero to Sold.
When you're starting with your business idea, you will be looking at how successful businesses have accomplished their success. You will see a lot of different sizes, markets, and business models. But they all have one thing in common: they've built a system that works.
Their long-term and short-term goals may have changed through the years, but the system that has kept them running never has. That system is the core of every business.
A sustainable bootstrapped business is successful when you have found a repeatable, reliable, and resilient system to continuously provide a value-producing product to paying customers at a profit.
As technical founders, we're supposed to choose the technology that works best for us and our business. But we often let the cargo-culting around the newest, hottest tech stack get to us.
Many technical founders see a new startup as an opportunity to figure out a modern tech stack. That is a dangerous move.
Not only do you have to deal with the inherently hazardous nature of creating a new business, but now there is also the chance that the new and mostly untested tech stack may not be able to solve the problem you're trying to solve.
First impressions matter. When someone checks out your social media profile, and they see a picture of a real human being that's accompanied by a meaningful description and a few well-selected links, they will be intrigued by who you are and what you're trying to accomplish.
If they find a default avatar picture and a half-assed description, they'll quickly move away from your profile.
When you're new in a community, people expect some level of initial effort after you join. Make it easy for people to get to know you. The real you.
Don't hide behind a pseudonym. Own your name and use it for your public work. Some communities might allow pseudonyms, but the chances are high that members expect you to show your face and use your name if you're in a professional community.
Most products that you will see staying on the market have something in common: they do one thing very well—and not much else. Weber sells grills that are fantastic at grilling. The furthest they have strayed into new territory so far has been adding an app-readable thermometer.
Still, that gimmick and anything else about their products is focused on making using their grills a great barbecuing experience. That's what it is about: having a barbecue that grills.
In the SaaS space, Stripe is a great example.
They provide a clean, well-designed, programmer-friendly service that allows you to charge your customers. While Stripe, as a company, offer a few adjacent services, their focus is always on making getting paid by your customers as comfortable and low-friction as possible.