I've been following Patrick since the old BoS days. He is great at marketing, but isn't a very good example of a 'solopreneur' or a bootstrapper.
If any of his companies were making him a good enough living, I don't think he would have gotten a day job at Stripe.
"when he didn't have the 'fire in his belly'y any longer"
I've been running my own company for almost 5 years after 5 years of side-projects and failures. To actually go from a project to a successful company, you need to do lots of boring work that has nothing to do with technology or development. Most of it is a slog, but is still required. You can eventually outsource this and hire other people, but this will take some time.
You will lose your fire at some point, but you still need to push through this. I've tried to partner with many different friends over the years on different business ideas and ventures. They all failed at some point because my partner (usually another developer) would get bored when things got tough or they had to work on something other than a cool library.
If you can't get through this, it's probably better to stick to working a job.
The other problem with Patrick is that everything he builds is from a developer perspective. Starfighter was a cool concept, but much too complicated for most people (from the business side of things. You need to spend time and money with tutorials attempting to convince business owners why this new concept is better than what they are currently using).
>He is great at marketing, but isn't a very good example of a 'solopreneur' or a bootstrapper.
This is actually the lens through which I view his writings: master solo marketer. He's managed to build a brand around these parts that, when viewed critically, is hard to explain. That's not easy. Some of the business decisions described here are baffling.
Patrick's product is himself not any of his "real" businesses. In this vein, he reminds me more of a Tim Ferris than someone like Amy Hoy for example. I know this reads negatively, but it's not meant to be a knock on Patrick, just an observation/opinion.
Ironic that you would choose Amy Hoy as a counter-example here. From what I can tell, the majority of Amy's "success" is in teaching, not doing. Don't get me wrong, Freckle seems to be doing well, but I think it's only at like $60k - $70k in MRR after eight or nine years. And that's with multiple staff members.
That's an accomplishment, yes, but I'm positive that I make 2x more with consulting than Amy nets from Freckle. I also know multiple SaaS founders much, much more successful (like 5x - 10x) than Freckle in much less time.
To be clear, it's not that Freckle is a disaster or anything, she should be proud of it, but it hardly means that she's qualified to be teaching people as some kind of brilliant guru, imo.
Not to mention that, unlike Patrick and Tim, she can be extremely abrasive and rude if you disagree with her about anything.
Yes, you're right. Amy is not a good example. I was getting her mixed up with someone else. I wish I could edit my original comment, but can't seem to do so.
Someone like DHH or Jason Fried is closer to what I had in mind.
I'm pretty turned off to the Tim Ferrises of the world generally speaking. They rub me off the wrong way as MLM schemes. Not as icky but enough similarities...
We used to do $240k a year in technical workshops, sold nearly $300k of ebooks, and have a million-dollar-a-year business… 3/4 of which is SaaS, not 30x500. And no, we don't have "multiple staff members." Freckle is run primarily by 1.5 people and it grows every year automatically, and grows very well every time we actually try to grow it.
And sure, we could make a lot more consulting too, especially since I have proven product chops. But who wants to deal with clients all day? All that negotiating and educating and meeting and trying to persuade them not to screw up their own projects, all their politicking, the invoicing and paperwork and phone calls and email change requests… no thank you.
I spent about 5 hours a month on Freckle, which is why it's not a multi-million-dollar business. But $700k/yr with 1 full-time employee works beautifully for me.
Try to beat that for an hourly rate with your consulting business.
Not OP, but I did. It worked out quite well for me. I've paid back the class 7x at this point, a few months after launching my first product. "Well" is all relative, of course. I'm not making enough to quit my job or anything, but I'm quite happy with where I am. I now have a system that works, and something I can continue to grow.
You insinuate that 30x500 is a scam or something. I can assure you it's not. But it does actually take work :)
Running up $120k in credit card debt? Paying $3k per month in interest on that debt while piling money into an app where "expenses grew faster than revenue"?
I know this stuff happens. I've been there, done that. But I don't have a reputation as a business guru, either.
If any of his companies were making him a good enough living, I don't think he would have gotten a day job at Stripe.
"when he didn't have the 'fire in his belly'y any longer"
I've been running my own company for almost 5 years after 5 years of side-projects and failures. To actually go from a project to a successful company, you need to do lots of boring work that has nothing to do with technology or development. Most of it is a slog, but is still required. You can eventually outsource this and hire other people, but this will take some time.
You will lose your fire at some point, but you still need to push through this. I've tried to partner with many different friends over the years on different business ideas and ventures. They all failed at some point because my partner (usually another developer) would get bored when things got tough or they had to work on something other than a cool library.
If you can't get through this, it's probably better to stick to working a job.
The other problem with Patrick is that everything he builds is from a developer perspective. Starfighter was a cool concept, but much too complicated for most people (from the business side of things. You need to spend time and money with tutorials attempting to convince business owners why this new concept is better than what they are currently using).