What are your recommended reads for bootstrapping a business?

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/81948.The_E_Myth_Revisit...

Changed the way I think about being an independent contributor vs an entrepreneur.

You should check out https://microconf.com and their youtube channel. They also have Slack community called "MicrConf Connect" and podcast "The Startups For the Rest of Us". Lots of good resources there.

Since every startup is different, I don't know how universal any advice might be. If you are not financially wealthy, be prepared for a long haul if your project is non-trivial. Without significant resources, you have to do everything yourself and revenues could be years away.

Not being able to quit your day job and devote all your time to it can push the schedule back significantly.

Sometimes, you can convince others to join you for a while without pay (only promises of equity), but unless they are 'all in', they generally fall away pretty fast.

$100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau. Really good at stripping away many of the reasons I had been holding onto to not start something on my own.

The book is agnostic about how you raise capital. It gives you the pros and cons of bootstrapping or raising money, and leaves it to you to decide what's best.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payback_period

* https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/engineering/payback-per...

* https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/paybackperiod.asp

Here are my fav resources:

Micro SaaS Ideas - https://microsaasidea.com - Newsletter (basic is free) + community (pro) for bootstrapped/solo founders. The content is superb - research backed insights & analysis.

Book: http://zerotofounder.co - covers both tech & marketing side. Author himself has successfully bootstrapped as a solo founder.

I've read a huge pile of books on this topic, but there's only one that I actually found worth reading. As a bonus, it's short.

The Incredible Secret Money Machine, by Don Lancaster.

It's short, easy to read and understand, and when I look back on all of the various business mistakes I've made over the decades, for every one I can find a place in that book where he warned about it.

What is the basic process for even starting a business?

I have been kicking around an idea, and have thought about building a site. Strictly an off-hours, hobby amount of effort. I think I would be lucky to recoup DO hosting fees. Given that I only expect this to be a learning experience, but still want to operate as if it were a real business - how do I begin?

The Mom Test would be a great book for validating ideas: https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone/...

I write about this at https://microsaasidea.com on how businesses are doing in each niche and how other can pick ideas in a given niche. It also has a boostrapping community attached.

We have about 15000 subs consuming my content.

"what they don't teach you in the harvard school of business", by mark mccormack, is the only book i read on "busyness".

Send me an e-mail and I'll send you curated resources that were useful over the years. I can't write a thorough reply right now and there are many layers to it.

TL;DR:

A market you can reach that can buy a product you can get distributed.

It's advantageous if you enjoy interacting with the people you want to solve problems for, especially initially (many calls, emails, conversations).

The product's sale complexity (high-touch vs. low-touch or self-service, buyer-is-user vs. buyer-is-not-user but can make discretionary decisions vs. purchase signed off by a committee) will impact what you do. Continually reduce the sale complexity.

"How to Make a Million Before Lunch" by Rachel Bridge