The endless treadmill
The endless treadmill
Why I'm prioritizing the journey over the destination
š Welcome to The MVP Sprint!Ā Iām Tim.
Iām sharing my public process of takingĀ HelloHaileyĀ from idea to thriving SaaS startup as a bootstrapped solopreneur.
Want to follow along?
Iāll be happy whenā¦
Iāve spent most of my professional life optimizing for the future:
As a 22-year old founder at a VC-backed startup, working 80-hour weeks for less than minimum wage - Itāll all be worth it when weāre billionaires changing the world (spoiler - it didnāt happenā¦)
As a Product Manager at a Silicon Valley tech company - Iāll be happy when I can quit, travel, and be a founder again.
As a bootstrapped founder (now) - Iāll be happy when HelloHailey hits $10k / month.
Happiness is a moving target.
Mortgaging the present for the future creates debt that can never be paid down. No amount of money can buy back time.
Actions express priorities
When I skipped vacations, nights out with friends, or trips to visit family, I was implicitly saying that these things were less important than my future goals.
So whatās the inverse of this?
Optimize for the journey
By expressing my priorities as uncompromisable constraints, Iām prioritizing the ājourneyā ahead of the ādestinationā.
For me, these constraints are (in no particular order):
Family - Iām going to travel to see my immediate family every quarter.
Friends - Iāll go out of my way to visit close friends. Iāll never miss an important social event.
Travel - Iāll live nomadically for as long as I enjoy it, spending 1-2 months in each destination.
Health/Fitness - I'll work out almost every day, and budget enough money to eat healthy.
With very few exceptions, these constraints will always come before my company.
This tradeoff increases my monthly burn and decreases how quickly I can grow. But I can solve for these problems as long as I'm playing the right game.
Pick the right game to play
I believe this approach is possible for most people if theyāre building a business where:
šø They can start making money in 1-2 months, not 6-12.
I launched my HelloHailey MVP in 3 weeks. I should make $3k-$5k in revenue in June. Early revenue + low-cost lifestyle = infinite runway.
š°They donāt need outside capital
Thereās nothing wrong with raising money, but it makes it much harder to ruthlessly prioritize like Iāve described. When you raise money, youāre hiring a boss.
I built up runway by living well below my means for years, and build and operate HelloHailey by myself.
š Theyāre not in a large, winner-take-all market
They can be successful with a small chunk of a huge market or a large chunk of a small niche. Good luck competing with Instagram or Airbnb while working 20 hours a week in Bali.
HelloHailey is a 7-figure opportunity with <1% of my total market (all remote teams).
āļøTheir product or service isnāt āmission criticalā for their customers
They wonāt be getting calls from angry CEOās if it goes down at 3am.
I'd get some emails from disappointed team members if HelloHailey went down for a couple days, but that's probably it.
Play it with the right strategy
When I work around my constraints, I have less time to work. So I have to be ruthlessly efficient.
Iām optimizing for one metric - the number of teams actively using HelloHailey. Every day, I work on what will be most impactful towards making this metric go up:
š Choose a north star metric.
š£ Set a path to get there.
š āāļø Eliminate everything else.
šø My first enterprise deals
I recently notified all teams that their free ride will be over on June 20th. I should hit $300-$600 MRR by the end of June, with most of that coming as up-front annual payments.
My January self wouldāve been ecstatic about this progress. And I am! But these brief moments of ecstasy have quickly been replaced by more ambitious goals.
And therein lies the allure of the endless treadmill.
My promise to myself is that Iāll enjoy the journey towards the next milestone even more than todayās destination.
š Launching on Product Hunt
After months of ideating, researching, and building, itās time to share HelloHailey with the world.
š¤ Fingers crossed for a successful launch!
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