Bootstrapped my startup to 10 million users with $0 funding. AMA!

Thank you for the questions! The great thing about bootstrapping is that there is no requirement for huge success. I previously had products that stagnated at $1K/month. I don't see them as failures. I learned a lot from them, and I moved on with new products. Jotform was probably my 5th product.

So, Jotform was always a success to me. Just like all the startups in the Indie Hackers community are successful. If you don’t compare yourself to others, and if you keep your expenses within your limits, you are always a success. Big or small.

The most successful marketing channel has always been organic search engine traffic for us. Because that’s the first place people who have a need search for a solution. But, without the virality of the forms we wouldn’t be able to grow to our scale. When people share a jotform with others, Jotform.com is on the domain name and on free accounts there is a powered by Jotform mention at the bottom.

If I was back at square one, I'd build another No Code product. That's the future. We're all creators. Giving people the tools so that they can build stuff on their own really excites me.

The great thing is I don't need to go back to square one to do that. We are developing features and products around Jotform so that people can build things on their own without coding.

Good question! I’ve been approached a couple of times, but the thing about VC especially, is that you’re trading control for financial support. Thankfully, by the time I decided to fully focus on Jotform, it already had some income and I had a lot saved up. My goal when quitting was to be my own boss, so I didn’t want to trade one boss for many by getting funded.

Thank you for the question!

My short answer: your day job doesn’t have to be a drag. I created my first software product in 1999, while I was at college studying computer science. It was a free, open-source membership program for a student organization website. As it became popular, people began paying me for customizations. I still remember the thrill of getting that first check — for a whopping $150. It felt like a huge milestone. I soon created a paid version that started racking up downloads when it was mentioned on a SitePoint newsletter.

After graduation, I could have gone all-in and focused exclusively on my product, but I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have enough confidence. I’m a surprisingly risk-averse person. I don’t believe that every entrepreneur has to be a fearless dreamer who jumps in with both feet, consequences be damned. So, I worked as a programmer for a New York media company — but I didn’t let a full-time job stop me from improving my product. I’d wake up at 6 am, answer customer questions, and then go to work. It took me another five years to quit my job and start my own company — even though I already had some small successful products.

Working at a medium-sized corporation out of school for 5 years taught me invaluable lessons about business, communication, and teams. I was also paid to immerse myself in new technologies and sharpen my programming skills. Your day job can actually fuel your business.

In addition to learning critical skills, you might even stumble upon your BIG idea — which is exactly what happened to me.

Well, there is one regret that I have. I wish I had taken more photos and recorded more videos of our team in the early days. It’d have made it way easier to remember memories from 10-15 years back. Many people I used to work with back then are in great places in other companies. I still meet with many of them from time to time. But, I sometimes wish I could remember more of those first years. So, take a lot of pictures and videos of your team as you are growing your company.

I don't agree with the premise that people will not trust a B2B product that is unfunded. On the contrary, I'd be worried about buying a B2B product that is funded by VCs. They are under high expectation to produce X amount of revenue in Y amount of time. So, I'd be worried about them jacking up the prices.

I'd prefer to depend on products made by businesses that don't have upcoming exit plans.

My short answer: You don’t have to give away a big chunk of your company. Investors often look for businesses run by co-founders with complementary skills. Maybe one person is a marketing genius and the other has deep technical experience. That’s why most business advisors tell people to pair up in order to get funding.

Co-founders can be great, but many entrepreneurs waste their time searching for a perfect match, just because investors often favor these teams. This mentality can lead to ill-fated partnerships, ugly splits down the road, and lost revenues — instead of better products. I almost had a co-founder in Jotform. A friend and I talked seriously about it, but the partnership didn’t work out in the end. It’s fine. There are no hard feelings, and I’ve been happy to build the company on my own terms.

By earning more than we spend, I can hire incredibly smart people to help me, without giving away half of the business. It’s a great way to work.

I'm glad my story has reached and inspired young people. There's so much to learn, and even I keep learning something every day. There's a long journey ahead of you and many good lessons and memories to make.

Thanks for the question! One thing I love about the hiring challenges when bootstrapping: you wear all the hats, and you learn how they fit. I launched Jotform in 2006 as a free product. When it was time to build a premium version, I hired my first employee. By that point, I knew exactly what kind of person I wanted to find. I knew what skills and attributes would complement my own. Almost a year later, I hired a full-time designer. I had been doing all the design work myself, so once again, I knew what skills we were seeking. The same scenario played out with our marketing team, accountants, and just about every other employee we’ve hired.

As a bootstrapped founder, I’ve tackled design, development, support, marketing, HR, dishwashing and office cleaning. I’m not trying to present myself as some kind of martyr; it’s just the truth. And it means that I really understand each role. That’s a major advantage when it’s time to pass the baton.

Thank you for the question Arstan! I did start globally. I think that's what's great about building an online product. You can reach the whole world.

But, we were only in English until recently. Only when we had the resources to support other languages did we start localizing our product.

Finding the Product Market Fit should be the first priority. So, I don’t think it is a good idea to worry about localization too early in the game. Even if you are from a non-English speaking country, I’d recommend starting with English. It is the language that has the biggest market and purchasing power.

Content Marketing.

If no one is coming to your website, no one is aware of you. The great thing about content marketing is that once you build good content, you will receive traffic to them for many many years.

Thank you! At every milestone I think like we're almost there, but there's always more to build, more problems to solve and more stories to write.

Thank you! The rebranding has been a long time coming actually. Jotform started as an online form builder but we’ve expanded so much on the functionality by adding features, new products, integrations over the years, it was time to adjust our branding to fit the direction we’re going.

Our audience is already quite big but the new branding helps us solidify our messaging and reach more people.

So, our free plan doesn’t restrict based on features but based on usage limits. This has two advantages. Firstly, people aren’t forced to take part in free trials or aren’t greeted with an immediate paywall. Secondly, the more people use our products, the better for us. User feedback has been the driving force behind our innovation.

Thank you Niall!

Thanks for the nice wishes!

JotForm. :)

Congratulations on building such an amazing idea.

No, we don’t have any plans for an IPO.

Thank you! I’ll answer them one by one.

1. I made the first project when I was a student. I was making a website for a student organization. I also built a profile and membership management system for them. I then posted it online as a open source product and it was picked up by Sitepoint newsletter and I started getting custom development jobs from clients who used my free product. I then built a paid version of my product, and as people asked for related products I created other similar products over the years.

I graduated and started working full time at a corporate job, but I continued developing and marketing my own small products on the side. I learned tremendously from them. I didn’t care how much I earned, I appreciated the chance to get people to use my products.

2. There weren't many tough days. We had a lot of fun during first years. We had a vision. We had users. We stayed small so I didn't have to worry about paying the salaries of my employees. We did what we can accomplish with a small team. That's what's great about bootstrapping. You can choose to go slowly and enjoy the ride. :)

Yeah, I see so many opportunities with forms. But, I am not going to share them here. Since we are building those features and products at Jotform. :)

We are going to launch one amazing idea on November 15th. We don’t announce the product updates beforehand so I can’t share the details.

Unfortunately, that's an area I have no experience in. You should probably seek advice from a lawyer on this. I have seen founders who have returned money back (or what’s left of it) to their investors, but it was because they failed and they wanted to close the shop in good terms with their investors.

The biggest early hurdle was to get word out about Jotform. That's always the hardest part: How to create buzz about a product.

I have done a few things to solve this problem. I had been blogging on my personal blog and contributing on some forums like Business of Software. So, when I launched I posted on my blog and I also posted on some online communities.

I also emailed a lot of tech news sites. I tried to find a good angle. News sites need a reason to care; something that’s unique, intriguing, fresh, or surprising. Jotform was one of the first single page web apps, and had a drag-and-drop WYSIWYG form editor that saved changes using AJAX. This was pretty innovative in 2006. That was my angle, and I applied it to pitch news sites, write blog posts, and develop PR plans. So, you need to find an angle that’s unique to you. PR is all about “what’s new”.

I already answered the second question above so I will just copy it from there: The most successful marketing channel has always been organic search engine traffic for us. Because that’s the first place people who have a need search for a solution. But, without the virality of the forms we wouldn’t be able to grow to our scale. When people share a jotform with others, Jotform.com is on the domain name and on free accounts there is a powered by Jotform mention at the bottom.

I did other things.

When I got tired of building the product, I focused on growth. When I got tired of marketing, I focused back on the product. A great solution for procrastination is to do different things. In a startup there are so many things that need to be done, just work on something else.

What if you don’t feel like doing anything at all? In times like that, I just launch Kindle and start reading a book that inspires me. That really works for me. After reading 5-10 pages, I am fired up again, and I am ready to tackle anything.

Also, make sure to rest well. I don’t work on weekends and I take a lot of vacations.

One book I can recommend to help you find your focus is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

I spent half of my time improving the product, and the other half growing and supporting my user base.

I took great pleasure in providing support for a small number of users I had. Because I knew that they were taking a risk by using a product made by one person. I fixed any problems they reported and implemented any features they requested quickly. And, I did this in a public forum. So, everyone could see a track record. They could see how quickly problems were fixed and features were implemented.

Keeping the product completely free in the first year allowed me to grow this user base more quickly. I was able to do that because of my savings from working a corporate job and because I had a revenue stream from other small products. That’s also why I was able to spend most of my time building, growing, and supporting Jotform even before we had a Product Market Fit.

What motivated me to find time to do an AMA on IH? As a bootstrapped founder, I have been reading all the books, blogs, and forums I could find over many many years, but I still learn from communities like Indie Hackers. I wish I could contribute more.

Thank you for the question.

The answer is no.

Getting funding for hundreds of millions of dollars does not automatically bring success. In fact, I’d argue that most often than not, getting funded can have a huge restrictive effect on your business.

You’re handing over the reins of your business to your investors, and there are many projects that failed because they weren’t able to adjust fast enough or pivot when they needed to. You’re in charge of building your product but you no longer have control over the vision of the company.

Thank you! Our employee growth really took off in the last few years. We have a unique team structure here. We have numerous small independent teams that are encouraged to act as their own small company.

Most product-focused teams have their own developers, designers, product managers, and marketing professionals. This allows us to be very agile. A new product or trend doesn’t stunt our growth as a single team has the capacity to work on an MVP independently.

On our marketing side, we have cross-functional teams that focus on certain aspects of our growth strategy but also complement each other without causing any friction.

We did not hire a single salesperson during our first 12 years. Only recently we started growing a sales team as our Enterprise product came out and became popular.