A bootstrappers tech stack

Speed is EVERYTHING when bootstrapping a business there is really one thing that matters: validate if your ideas matters also to others. The faster you are able to validate, the better.

I’ve been both a co-founder of a bootstrapped company and a developer and tech lead in a more corporate environment. I’ve seen the benefits of both worlds. I’ve seen what type safety and static type checks can do. But in a bootstrapping environment they are just not a necessity. Type safety and staticly typed languages are luxuries you can’t afford when you’re hustling to get your product off the ground. Yup, I’m talking about any high level language that lets you write terrible code if don’t know what you are doing: Javascript, Python, Ruby, you get the picture. Nope, even Typescript will slow you down, with it’s build steps and setup.

A lot of boostrappers talk about revenue’s earned, while ignoring how they are burning their savings account. This burn rate, called opportunity costs, is real. And as an entrepeneur you should always be aware of the impact of these costs on your real profit. If you are earning $1000 a month, minus some server costs of $50 and some tooling of $50, then you just calculated your profit wrong. All the hours your spend on your product (including development and marketing) are also costs, because you could not have spend those hours on something else, like a job.

No types, error handling, memory management. Only happy path, dynamic language coding.

This blog is build using Hugo, plain old inline CSS and a tiny bit of vanilla Javascript. It’s boring, but it incredibly fast. Both: to run and to make.