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Hey 👋

I'm experimenting with a new name and format for this newsletter. The name Founder Tonic is an ode to my writing on bootstrapped startups and my love of a good gin and tonic. The content I share here should be a refreshing break from the usual tech-bro, hustle culture type of startup writing. Instead I want to share thoughtful advice on building bootstrapped startups, and trying to live an interesting, fulfilling life.

As for the format, I'm probably going to be playing with this a lot until I find what works. But I want to try getting back to my Startup Watching roots, and sharing content that isn't just mine. A lot of my favorite newsletters over the years have been publications like Nat Eliason's Monday Medley, Peter Kang's Consumed / Created, and Haley Bryant's Start Again Today. All of these combine some original content with manual curation. I feel like with all of our feeds now being algorithmically driven now is a great time to zig towards manual curation. And IMO there still isn't a great place to discover bootstrapped startup content.

So my plan is to send 1 newsletter every month with:

• 3 human-curated links for bootstrapped founders
• 1 original essay
• 3 links just for fun

Hit reply and let me know what you think! Would you rather just have links to my original essays without the extra fluff? Or do you like the curation bit as well? Bonus points if you can tell me why I picked 3-1-3.

Cheers,

Andrew

From the bootstrapped world

​Avoid blundering: 80% of a winning strategy​

Instead of unhelpful cliches like, "startups fail because they run out of money," Jason Cohen (founder of WPEngine) put together a list of the common, avoidable blunders that founders make that lead to failure. I've made pretty much all of these mistakes, and seen others make them as well.

​Founding Sales​

Rob Walling regularly recommends Founding Sales to new founders who are trying to learn sales for the first time. I bought a copy and cracked it open, and its dense (it's meant to be a reference book more than a read-through) but super valuable. You can register for free to read it online, and you can also listen to this podcast episode to get a lot of it.

​No such thing as a solo business​

From me

​Market size heuristics for indie SaaS founders​

I’ve been thinking about TAM (Total Addressable Market) a lot lately. When I became interested in bootstrapping, I figured I would never think about market sizes again. Who cares how big the market is? I don’t need millions of customers to build a good bootstrapped business. But the best founders talk constantly about how important finding the right market is. So I mapped out the number of customers you need as a bootstrapped founder to hit different goals, and then used that to estimate the minimum market sizes we should be targeting. Plus I look at some of the best advice out there on what else matters when picking a good mark

From the internet

​Chaunce hiked the Foothills Trail! Terrain, difficulty, hiking with a dog, and gear​

Backpackers Radio is quickly becoming my new favorite podcast, and so I was stoked when one of the hosts hiked the hike I'm planning to do in a few weeks with my dad. The Foothills Trail is a smaller through-hike (76 miles) through some of the most beautiful parts of South Carolina. It was really fun to hear the area getting some love and to get a preview of what I can expect later this month.

​Flyanna Boss asks Hank Green anything and everything​

I'm an avid follower of the Green brothers, who are OG Youtubers, authors, and educators. I love the model they have developed where they continue to earn money from their books, but their earnings from everything else (like their Youtube channels, The Good Store, etc.) to healthcare and education initiatives. In this recent video hiphop duo Flyanna Boss asks Hank a bunch of questions, and it's the most off-the-wall, delightful interview I've seen in a long time.

​Always here for a Good Place reference​

Bonus: a picture of the robot my robotics team built this year (I mentor a high school robotics team in Detroit)