This is super refreshing! I really hope that this community lasts. For me, even though I passionately believe in my project, the biggest problem is that I can't motivate myself on a day-to-day basis, so I end up getting distracted. But I do notice that when I discuss my project with friends and family, I can get rolling again. Going to a startup event gives that effect too, but lesser as I always feel out of place - I don't want external funding as huge as VC's, nor am I in a hurry to scale it asap and so on. It seems that "organic" growing is most suitable for my profile; yes I want to make a profit but I also want to make it a personal enrichment (my project is art/education based). But without peer "push", the project can stretch for years at this rate! A community like this could be a game-changer :)
As a bootstrapped founder, exciting to see communities like this forming and rising. It's such a non-traditional way to start, build and grow a business in Silicon Valley that it can be baffling for new founders or those that want to try something "different". I've been encouraged by the recent success of the Tugboat Institute and its Evergreen movement, too, FWIW: http://www.thetugboatgroup.com/
We bootstrapped 4 years ago and after a year we had enough revenue to pay ourselves a small paycheck. Kept the platform and team lean the entire way. Today we're a team of 3 people and we closed out 2015 with $2M in revenue.
The growth was definitely a lot slower in the beginning but retaining control (instead of taking VC) has been a very positive upside.
Thanks for pointing that out. It is funny that this is a very normal way to start a business almost everywhere else - but people do look at you funny in Silicon Valley.
I suppose I should have elaborated on our journey. The nutshell is that we've been in business for 14 years, bootstrapped and profitable, and currently employ more than 120 of the best people I know. It can be done, even in Silicon Valley. :)
And my final sentence of the "Welcome to Barnacles" post included a request for votes on YC News, though I didn't screenshot before I reworded that. I honestly had no idea of the rule here, so I've removed it. If there's flags, penalties, or removal I earned it. Nothing more to be done.
Seemed like an honest mistake. It's a little unfair to the other submissions, but I mostly wanted to warn you guys that HN does attempt to detect vote manipulation and removes posts (and the moderators will manually do it if they notice).
Excellent idea. I hope the site will gather critical mass and become a living community.
I suspect the community might become more Europe-oriented, because it’s more difficult to get funding here and there are more bootstrapped businesses as a result.
> I suspect the community might become more Europe-oriented, because it’s more difficult to get funding here and there are more bootstrapped businesses as a result.
It's also a lot harder to set up any sort of business in most places in Europe, at least compared to doing it in the US. I wouldn't be surprised if this community will become centered on North/South America and Asia.
In the US, you could start selling widgets instantly (all legally, taxes taken care of). Getting an LLC (something like a GmbH/Ltd) set up takes around 1-2 weeks tops, securing a company credit card - a few days.
Granted, you can't start a company in most countries "instantly" but compared to the time it takes to write software?
For instance in Germany you have the "Unternehmergesellschaft" or Mini-GmbH which is really cheap to set up and should also be really cheap to run as long as you're not doing anything complex accounting-wise. From what I've heard it doesn't take more than a couple weeks.
In certain industries there is a bias against that form as it shows you are bootstrapping without much cash, but I would hope it's not a problem in tech. Though it probably does suck to write "haftungsbeschränkt" (liability-limited) everywhere: there is no legal short version.
Germany's bureaucracy is more cumbersome than many in the EU I think. It's not the worst, and has the advantage that it does follow its own rules and is not corrupt. But they really like requiring many forms on paper, and in-person visits to a variety of offices. There are other EU countries with more streamlined processes.
In Denmark the situation is not that different from the US. You can legally operate as a sole proprietor simply by filling out an online form registering for a CVR number (a business tax ID). It's free and instant. Setting up an ApS or IVS (roughly equivalent to an LLC) is also pretty easy, and can be done online.
You could go the way of a UK Ltd company, 4 hours to set up via an incorporation website. I've used it to set up companies - US Ex-pat living in the Czech Rep. Works all across the EU.
I'll still have to take care of taxes locally here (tax residency, grumbles), which are the biggest time sink. Maybe I should hop the border into the Czech Rep. :)
> I suspect the community might become more Europe-oriented, because it’s more difficult to get funding here and there are more bootstrapped businesses as a result.
You underestimate the number of bootstrapped businesses here in the US. :)
I was just checking this out yesterday because there were some pull requests on lobsters referencing barnacles.
This is the first of many spin-offs using the lobste.rs source code and I think it's a cool initiative!!
One of my feature requests to lobsters was to incorporate Oauth provider so it becomes an alternative identity/auth source. The invite tree and the moderation log will cause it to be one of the most trusted of these providers.
My request was rejected by jcs, but it will be cool to see you incorporate this.
Shareware was a business model. Bootstrapping is the best current term I know of, but I've also seen it used by startups saying they didn't take a seed round in advance of Series A. I would love to bring back some of the vibe of the Joel on Software forums.
i really like the name. I'm trying to start officecrashe.rs which: 1) is a barnacle type idea - i.e. even if company doesn't make money, I'll run it because that's success to me. and 2) after registering my first .rs domain and dealing with all that comes with a domain like that, I feel for the barnacl dot es people.
1) some email validaters don't accept the domain as a valid email
2) it's more expensive that a normal .com
3) there's less of a need for www. infront of a non-.com (IMO)
4) sometimes when typing out the domain it'll turn hot and clickable, sometimes not
5) you are super hipster and cool with a non-dot-com
I have a prediction: starts out strong, but devolves into shameless self promotion. Its a common trend i've seen in a handful of "startup" focused groups. But maybe this time will be different.
How has HN (partly) avoided this? I guess having a separate "show" category helps.
I think the high-brow tone helps too. Sometimes it chafes but it's way better than the alternative. People do self-promote here but to get away with it you have to have some actual substance... any "hey look at me I am awesome" stuff tends to get buried.
HN had both the cultural and financial backing and motivation for a core group to keep the site on target day after day in the early days. And it grew slowly.
Most communities that don't make it start in a blaze of glory then the curators/moderators tire of keeping that fire blazing day after day.
Why “Barnacles”? The venture capitalists own the term “startup” and it’s not worth fighting over. There isn’t really any perfect term for this business niche, so I punted on trying to invent one.
The term is "small business." There are millions of them all over the world. More of them than there are "startups" by number at the least.
It never ceases to amaze me how warped and myopic the tech industry's understanding of the world is.
The problem with using "small business" as a blanket term is that they vary widely in stage and ambition. For example, it's a mouthful to distinguish between "brand new small business" and "established small business" as well as "small business that intends to stay small" and "small business that intends to pursue growth to become medium-sized or large-sized without taking dilutive investment."
For 95%+ of small businesses in the world, it's "small businesses with no VC involved, and who intent to stay small" [1].
Startups in the SV notion of the term don't even compare in number, even in the US. Heck, every accounting firm you see, it's such as "small business". Every local grocery store. Every restaurant. Every ice cream parlor. Every jewelry maker. The list goes on and on...
[1] Well, they wouldn't say no to striking it big, but it's not like SV founders dreaming of $10B exit.
> It never ceases to amaze me how warped and myopic the tech industry's understanding of the world is.
Grandiose slurs like this count as calling names in arguments, which is against the rules here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html. There's no content in such a statement, merely indignation and setting yourself above others. That appeals to others who share the same identity sentiment (in this case, anti-"tech industry" as opposed to pro-"tech industry", not that these things mean anything), but it does not add information to a discussion, which is what we're looking for.
The rest of your comment is fine, of course, though not necessarily true—these terms aren't obviously synonymous.
My understanding is that this community is oriented toward technology entrepreneurs executing smaller opportunities, so same crowd as HN minus those shooting to build the next Facebook or Uber.
I'm not sure if "small business" is an appropriate word to describe a product/service without geographic boundaries. It is if you're starting a dry-cleaner or restaurant, but I'm not sure that's what this crowd is doing.
Small businesses (or SMEs, even) are categories that include start-ups, though—at least during one phase of a start-up's lifecycle. There is no single "advice for small businesses" (except maybe "pursue grants"?) because different SMEs have different trajectories, and thus different spending/hiring/etc. strategies.
There really does need to be a term for "SME pursuing a growth-heavy strategy, to the degree that's possible without outside assistance."
Why should it surprise you? We celebrate people who cloister themselves for 10 years, from the moment they go to college until they're 28, and you wonder why they have such a loose grasp of reality? They haven't participated during the most formative years of their lives.
