Rocket Lease: 1 Year Review

I always love seeing what the real numbers of a bootstrapped business look like. It's easy to look at a company that's been around long enough to be successful and think, "If I just build a product and flip a switch... I'll be rich." and it really doesn't work that way.<p>It's a long, slow, slog to get to a certain level of success if you're bootstrapping.

Wow never heard of this before, but I might consider using this. This is amazing and detailed info on costs of running a business. Thanks for sharing!<p>A few questions I have, IF you don't mind: 1. If you're contracted out your dev work, do you mostly work as a manager, ensuring day-to-day operations? 2. Looks like you're now making a profit but a really small one... for May 2013: $5660 - $2377.23 - $1808 = ~$1500, is that right? 3. Sounds like your revenue vs costs/expenses scale linearly as well, but more business = more margins, is that right?<p>Once again, thanks for this detailed post! Very enlightening!

Call for action: more posts like this on HN please!<p>This is exactly the kind of information that is valuable, pertinent, and helpful to star-uppers. Not only that, but I love how the article foregoes mumbo-jumbo and goes straight to the stats and numbers. +1 to you, sir.<p>Coming from a recent failed bootstrapped start-up, this is both encouraging and motivating! It's hard out there, but it's good to see people achieve even a moderate level of success.

I love bootstrapped companies. I was in the exact same position about 6 years ago. My advice: it is time to put a grey hat on. I'd do the following:<p>1) Buy an email lists of property companies and send some unsolicited emails to people that want your product but don't know it . "Are you tired of dealing with rental application forms?"<p>2) Use fiverr to contact property owners on craigslist.<p>Once you get to about $10k/month you can stop doing these things and there will likely be natural organic growth. You can then start spending a few grand a month on "Free Rental Application", "Rental Application Template", etc. keywords. That will drive predictable growth over time with very little effort.

Great post Eric - Good to see all of the data we've been digging into get out there in the startup community!