Are there any successful bootstrapped B2C companies?
There are a lot of B2B companies, but I rarely see any B2C companies that are bootstrapped.
The only one that comes to mind is YNAB (and I can't confirm it hasn't taken funding, but it doesn't look like it).
My hypothesis is that most B2C apps need to reach a certain scale to be profitable and that scale usually requires outside funding.
Would love to see some examples of B2C apps that were able to successfully bootstrap.
Bonus points for pure B2C like YNAB (so no B2C apps with team plans).
(I live in both the B2B space (aloa.co) and B2C space (ellieplanner.com) and am noticing B2C is significantly harder than B2B)
Trending on Indie Hackers
I bootstrapped multiple B2C businesses to profitability as a solofounder. My most recent one was bootstrapped to profitability in 6 months. I started charging 3 months in. I also have another bootstrapped business that was profitable in 3 months. started it with $50 and a ton of market research.
From personal experience, bootstrapping is super delicate as in the early stages competition can easily knock you out so it is nice to stay quiet and fly under the radar until you have serious momentum. personally that anxiety has stayed with me over the years and I like to keep it all close to the chest for that reason.
don't buy the VC narrative that it's necessary to raise to scale. i've worked in vc as well. many projects will go to vc without having product/market fit and raise money partially for product validation when that's not really the validation you need, you need market validation. many vc invested projects are propped up by the vc and for that reason you can fall into a trap with too much money and a bad product. my 2 cents.
Hi Eric!I had a quick question
I was just wondering if you were working solely on your own or with someone? I'm currently working with someone on a mobile app that we think might make a bit of revenue and would love to learn more about how you structured your entity and taxes.
Did you do a sole or dual proprietorship, an inc, an llc etc? And why? If not, is there anything you recommend for two indiehackers working together on an app? Thank you so much! :)
I hire freelancers/contractors from time to time but I don't have a formal partner. I did LLC and based in my home state. I would consult an accountant/tax professional for deeper insights. With online businesses there's dispute as to whether you should incorporate in delaware or your home state. I got mixed responses so I just incorporated in home state to be safe. I set it up through legalzoom which is what my accountant recommended and fwd him all the documents to have on file.
If it were me i'd have an LLC set up for myself that I can push the losses through if you end up losing money. If you have a fulltime job and no LLC you can't claim the losses. So I guess that's the risk mitigation side. Setting up entities is a pain and in my opinion time is best spent on product/market fit at first, everything else is a distraction. Once you're on a path to where you know you will be able to pay for entity formation etc. with revenue then i'd set everything up.
This is my personal opinion it is in no way the right way to do things. just has always been the least friction way for me.
Thanks for sharing.
"many projects will go to vc without having product/market fit and raise money partially for product validation when that's not really the validation you need, you need market validation" -> really resonate with this
Would you be able to share (even privately) how big some of those businesses were revenue wise? Even ranges would be helpful. I'm trying to get a sense of how big some of these things can be and what is in the realm of reality
the ones that raised or the ones that I built?
check out Dannypostmaa and levels on twitter. Levels makes multi millions a year as a solofounder. i worked at Universal music years ago in their business department and would speak with founders looking to do licensing deals all the time. I met a solofounder who was making over $1mill/year on an iphone app he built. the opportunities are out there, just gotta find them and creatively navigate them.
This comment was deleted a year ago.
Go to the Products menu and filter as you please. You'll find tons of successful B2C startups.
For anyone reading this comment, the Products tab actually does have a "B2C" filter. I'm going to spend a long time on here, thanks for the rec Fabri
We have some good ones at FounderBeats around B2B and B2C as well.
I have interviewed many in my podcast. From the top of my head you have:
Both great examples, thank you.
NordVPN / Nord Security. Only recently they raised funding. They completely bootstrapped until the point where they had 15 million users. https://techcrunch.com/2022/04/06/nord-security-the-startup-behind-nordvpn-raises-its-first-ever-funding-100m-at-a-1-6b-valuation/
There's a good history of the early days of NordVPN here
https://medium.com/authority-magazine/eimantas-sabaliauskas-of-tesonet-5-things-i-wish-someone-told-me-before-i-became-a-founder-d9771b92ee94
I'm going to go through this article, appreciate that.
I am actually STUNNED that they did not raise money and achieved what they did. I totally would have guessed they did
What would you define as successful, Chris? I would also love to connect with other B2C startups and see how they have scaled their business.
I completely agree with your observation. It's much harder for B2C companies to become profitable without outside funding due to the larger customer acquisition costs and the need for constant marketing to maintain brand awareness and growth. It's great to see examples like YNAB as a rare but successful example of a bootstrapped B2C company. It would be interesting to see more examples of B2C apps that have found success with bootstrapping.
Mine is a B2C SaaS (https://ktool.io). It’s profitable, but not “successful” yet 😁
Pieter Levels launched multiple successful bootstrap B2C. He has article of how he did it too. you should check it out.
There are a lot of examples in the #buildinpublic and #indiemaker community on Twitter.
Anything from levelsio counts i think.
Ya great examples (especially his latest) of B2C there.
The transparency of revenue helps a lot to show what is possible
Zerodha - Stock investing platform is one B2C business that is completely bootstrapped.
This is a great example. I did some Googling trying to find more info on them (especially to figure out their size) but couldn't find too much. Would do more research later