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Zero to Sold: How to Start, Run, and Sell a Bootstrapped Business
Zero to Sold is a comprehensive and actionable guide through the four stages of a bootstrapped Preparation, Survival, Stability, and Growth.
From your first idea to successfully selling your business for life-changing amounts of money, this book will help you become a world-class entrepreneur. By focussing on your niche audience, finding their critical problem, and solving it with a product that your customers can't resist to pay for, you will learn how to create a recurring revenue engine that will make you financially independent.
It's easy to build software products. The hard part is turning them into viable businesses that stand the test of time. If you want to build a business that survives, you have to know what challenges you will encounter. Zero to Sold tells the story of a sustainable, bootstrapped software business that grew to thousands of customers before it was acquired.
Arvid Kahl is a software engineer turned entrepreneur who has accomplished just that. He co-founded and grew an online teacher productivity SaaS business called FeedbackPanda to $55,000 Monthly Recurring Revenue with his partner Danielle Simpson. They sold the business for a life-changing amount of money in 2019, just two years after founding the business. Arvid writes on The Bootstrapped Founder blog.
In Zero to Sold, Arvid shares his experiences, learnings, and insights from building a Software-as-a-Service business from start to finish. He shows what worked and what didn't work. If you want to build your own bootstrapped business and stay sane while doing it, Zero to Sold will be your guide.
You will learn how
explore and validate your idea before you jump into building a prototype that no one needs.find a well-defined audience, locate their critical problem, envision a solution that fits into their workflow, and build a product that makes them want to pay. Then, build a repeatable process of selling your a business.grow your business sustainably and make it sellable, even if you want to keep it forever. Or sell it for a life-changing amount of money. Either way, you can prepare.Zero to Sold is the ultimate business a memoir, a manual, a journal, and a guide. It will help you validate your ideas, build your products, and grow your businesses, whatever stage you might be at right now.
From your first idea to successfully selling your business for life-changing amounts of money, this book will help you become a world-class entrepreneur. By focussing on your niche audience, finding their critical problem, and solving it with a product that your customers can't resist to pay for, you will learn how to create a recurring revenue engine that will make you financially independent.
It's easy to build software products. The hard part is turning them into viable businesses that stand the test of time. If you want to build a business that survives, you have to know what challenges you will encounter. Zero to Sold tells the story of a sustainable, bootstrapped software business that grew to thousands of customers before it was acquired.
Arvid Kahl is a software engineer turned entrepreneur who has accomplished just that. He co-founded and grew an online teacher productivity SaaS business called FeedbackPanda to $55,000 Monthly Recurring Revenue with his partner Danielle Simpson. They sold the business for a life-changing amount of money in 2019, just two years after founding the business. Arvid writes on The Bootstrapped Founder blog.
In Zero to Sold, Arvid shares his experiences, learnings, and insights from building a Software-as-a-Service business from start to finish. He shows what worked and what didn't work. If you want to build your own bootstrapped business and stay sane while doing it, Zero to Sold will be your guide.
You will learn how
explore and validate your idea before you jump into building a prototype that no one needs.find a well-defined audience, locate their critical problem, envision a solution that fits into their workflow, and build a product that makes them want to pay. Then, build a repeatable process of selling your a business.grow your business sustainably and make it sellable, even if you want to keep it forever. Or sell it for a life-changing amount of money. Either way, you can prepare.Zero to Sold is the ultimate business a memoir, a manual, a journal, and a guide. It will help you validate your ideas, build your products, and grow your businesses, whatever stage you might be at right now.
502 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 25, 2020
507 people are currently reading
1785 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 38 reviews
June 15, 2023
It gets better and better in time.
In the initial chapter, there's not much about actual bootstrapping. The author is far more concerned about identifying & pursuing correct product opportunities - which ofc makes much sense. However, there are tons of books on that. In time there's more & more focus on bootstrapping, frugality, and priorities - the advice is practical, reasonable & generic enough for pretty much any software-based business. The most interesting chapter is probably the one about exit options - reasonably detailed & something you don't find in every 2nd book available.
It's definitely not a perfect book - some simplifications are irritating (e.g., when the author focuses too much on technology), the initial part is maybe a bit too repetitive over classics, but in the end, there are so few books on bootstrapping businesses & startup solopreneurship, that I recommend this one anyway.
4.4 stars, but I have a good mood today, so why don't we round it to 5.
In the initial chapter, there's not much about actual bootstrapping. The author is far more concerned about identifying & pursuing correct product opportunities - which ofc makes much sense. However, there are tons of books on that. In time there's more & more focus on bootstrapping, frugality, and priorities - the advice is practical, reasonable & generic enough for pretty much any software-based business. The most interesting chapter is probably the one about exit options - reasonably detailed & something you don't find in every 2nd book available.
It's definitely not a perfect book - some simplifications are irritating (e.g., when the author focuses too much on technology), the initial part is maybe a bit too repetitive over classics, but in the end, there are so few books on bootstrapping businesses & startup solopreneurship, that I recommend this one anyway.
4.4 stars, but I have a good mood today, so why don't we round it to 5.
October 4, 2020
It's a decent book if you are a complete newbie to building companies. Ideal for people still in their job, and contemplating starting a new company.
Some sections are insightful (especially those around identifying a niche and building product for early audiences).
Some sections are insightful (especially those around identifying a niche and building product for early audiences).
December 6, 2020
Enjoyed it but dry at parts
Enjoyed the book, with the direct and practical language, but found it dry at parts. I think it could’ve benefited from more of a narrative around FeedbackPanda (more fleshed out stories related to learnings in book).
Enjoyed the book, with the direct and practical language, but found it dry at parts. I think it could’ve benefited from more of a narrative around FeedbackPanda (more fleshed out stories related to learnings in book).
July 9, 2020
A must to read book for SaaS founders
Zero to Sold is a very practical guideline for bootstrapping a SaaS business. Arvid shares his learnings and experiences very openly to the reader. As he says at the end of the book Arvid has written this book to someone who is in his place five years before he sold his successful bootstrapped SaaS business, Feedback Panda.
I recommend this book to anyone who has started or thinks about starting a SaaS business.
Zero to Sold is a very practical guideline for bootstrapping a SaaS business. Arvid shares his learnings and experiences very openly to the reader. As he says at the end of the book Arvid has written this book to someone who is in his place five years before he sold his successful bootstrapped SaaS business, Feedback Panda.
I recommend this book to anyone who has started or thinks about starting a SaaS business.
February 15, 2024
I'm a fan of the author's podcast and that's how I get to know this book. Right now, I'm at the beginning of my journey to become an indie developer. I picked up this book hoping to learn from his experience to bootstrap my own SaaS.
What I like
- Very detail. When he says "zero to sold", he means it.
- He provides practical advices, not just some theories.
- He backs his claim with his own experiences with his business and he discloses things that he can only imagine but have no real experience.
- His experience is on software which is very much related to what I do. We are both a programmer so it's so relatable.
What I don't like
- Too details. But the book is not at the wrong here, it's me. I'm way too early in my journey that most of things he shares is not at all applicable for me at the moment. By the time I need it, I'll probably need to read again. I'm sure I won't remember everything he said by then.
- His approach is audience first. My personal approach is product first. His approach is proven to be profitable but I just don't feel that I'm in the right state of mine to implement it. And knowing that I walk the opposite direction from what he recommends make me feel demotivated about my path.
Who should read this
- If you are already building a SaaS and want to take it to another level
- If you have a product and you want to sell it
- If you want to start a SaaS and you don't mind talking to people to validate your idea
What I like
- Very detail. When he says "zero to sold", he means it.
- He provides practical advices, not just some theories.
- He backs his claim with his own experiences with his business and he discloses things that he can only imagine but have no real experience.
- His experience is on software which is very much related to what I do. We are both a programmer so it's so relatable.
What I don't like
- Too details. But the book is not at the wrong here, it's me. I'm way too early in my journey that most of things he shares is not at all applicable for me at the moment. By the time I need it, I'll probably need to read again. I'm sure I won't remember everything he said by then.
- His approach is audience first. My personal approach is product first. His approach is proven to be profitable but I just don't feel that I'm in the right state of mine to implement it. And knowing that I walk the opposite direction from what he recommends make me feel demotivated about my path.
Who should read this
- If you are already building a SaaS and want to take it to another level
- If you have a product and you want to sell it
- If you want to start a SaaS and you don't mind talking to people to validate your idea
July 10, 2020
I began reading this when the author was working on it publicly over Twitter. He wrote a series of blogs that eventually became this book! There’s so many good nuggets in here and I recommend it for any SAAS founder, product managers, bootstrappers, aspiring founders, etc. Main nugget for me was his tips on how to structure customer calls - where they are now, where do they want to be, what’s stopping them from getting there?
September 8, 2020
Absolutely recommend.
October 8, 2024
Delivers on its promise - a FULL story of a 'classic' successful SaaS journey. It's the first book I've read in the genre that actually covered the WHOLE journey, not skipping the boring parts. The downside is that the book is way too long - could have been 150-200 pages. Ideas and stories are repeated more than once.
For me, it was easy to solve by skimming through big chunks of it, and I really enjoyed the parts I've read.
Kahl covers 4 stages:
1. The preparation stage
2. The survival stage
3. The stability stage
4. The growth stage.
I especially liked the content in the first stage (maybe because it's where I'm at). Here are some tactical quotes I found useful from the first 3 stages:
1. The Preparation Stage
The novel idea for me is to START with the niche audience, not with the problem itself. Kahl shares 5 steps:
- Find your niche audience.
- Find and validate their critical problem.
- Invent and validate a solution to their problem.
- Build a product to implement that solution.
- Build a business that can repeatedly sell that product to your audience.
The essential action in this step is to find the most critical problem your audience is experiencing. You are looking for painful problems, and you want to solve the most painful of them all. You also need to validate that this is an actual problem that people need to have addressed. Sometimes, we just want to complain, but we don’t want to change our ways.
- A Critical Problem Is Painful - Find the critical problem where ignoring something causes a lower quality of life.
- A Critical Problem Wastes Time or Money - Find the critical problem at the intersection of something mandatory and something wasteful.
- A Critical Problem Is Not Optional - Find the critical problem where people would love to opt out, but can’t.
- A Critical Problem Occurs Frequently and Repeatedly - Find the critical problem where people need to do the same thing over and over again.
- A Critical Problem Takes up Too Much Time - Find the critical problem where solving a problem takes a long time every time the problem occurs.
- A Critical Problem Forces People to Solve It Using Their Own System - Find the critical problem where people are solution-aware and have already created their own simple systems to solve the problem.
- Bonus: A Critical Problem Is Something Companies Hire to Solve - They’ll be willing to pay: if the solution saves them time if the solution saves them money if the solution makes them money If it does all three at the same time, it will be a guaranteed hit. The more your solution provides along these dimensions, the more valuable it will be.
On MVPs: The Do’s and Don’ts of the Minimum Viable Product
It's incredibly hard to time when your MVP is done. Here's the problem: you're much too invested. You have the grand vision of what your product could be. And here you are, looking at a version that is slimmed down to the extent of being unrecognizable.
It will always feel like it's not good enough yet. Here is how you can reframe this perspective: all your customers want is to have one less problem in their lives. They are sitting in front of a bowl of soup with a fork. You have a tiny spoon to offer, but you think you could make a much larger spoon. Your customers will be perfectly happy with the small spoon, because no matter what it can do for them in the future, it will already help them with their bowl of soup, right here and now.
2. The Survival Stage
On annual plans and freemium:
It’s also a highly psychological issue: annual plans are usually discounted and therefore non-refundable. Purchasing such a plan will make your customers want to get value from their subscription immediately and as fast and for as long as possible. There is a sense of commitment to spending a year’s worth of money on a single purchase. While you have to provide the same value you would provide to monthly subscribers, your annual subscribers will feel a stronger commitment to your product and their choice to use it.
You should also discount your yearly subscriptions, for two reasons. First, a cheaper subscription will incentivize customers who like to save on purchases they would make anyway. Second, and this is a much more critical reason, a discounted plan can come with a (clearly visible and communicated) non-refundable clause. This allows you to use the full amount for investing in your business, alleviating the need to hold funds for possible refunds, should the business run into trouble.
Seller Beware: Pricing Models That Can Break Your Business
Finally, freemium plans could cannibalize your paid plans. Every free-plan user is a user who could be on a paid plan if you didn't have a freemium option. Think about it like this: if the customer would have paid, you don't capture their revenue. If they wouldn't have paid anyway, why would you want them as a customer?
The Stability Stage
Customer Exploration: Seeing Through Your Customer’s Eyes:
Ask for an unbiased walkthrough. Make your customers use the product to solve their problem under your observation, best through screen sharing. Ask them to explain to you what they're doing. Act as if you were someone who is seeing the product for the first time. What works well here is asking your customer to explain it as if you were a colleague. The idea here is to remove any bias toward you. The video part of this will be incredibly useful. You can see how quickly customers pick up interface actions and how they interact with your product.
After the walkthrough, ask what pains them. Which needs are not fulfilled? Where are costs too high? Where do they spend more time than they'd like? This is an excellent opportunity for them to reflect on the actions they just took and discover where reality was disconnected from the expectations they might have had.
For me, it was easy to solve by skimming through big chunks of it, and I really enjoyed the parts I've read.
Kahl covers 4 stages:
1. The preparation stage
2. The survival stage
3. The stability stage
4. The growth stage.
I especially liked the content in the first stage (maybe because it's where I'm at). Here are some tactical quotes I found useful from the first 3 stages:
1. The Preparation Stage
The novel idea for me is to START with the niche audience, not with the problem itself. Kahl shares 5 steps:
- Find your niche audience.
- Find and validate their critical problem.
- Invent and validate a solution to their problem.
- Build a product to implement that solution.
- Build a business that can repeatedly sell that product to your audience.
The essential action in this step is to find the most critical problem your audience is experiencing. You are looking for painful problems, and you want to solve the most painful of them all. You also need to validate that this is an actual problem that people need to have addressed. Sometimes, we just want to complain, but we don’t want to change our ways.
- A Critical Problem Is Painful - Find the critical problem where ignoring something causes a lower quality of life.
- A Critical Problem Wastes Time or Money - Find the critical problem at the intersection of something mandatory and something wasteful.
- A Critical Problem Is Not Optional - Find the critical problem where people would love to opt out, but can’t.
- A Critical Problem Occurs Frequently and Repeatedly - Find the critical problem where people need to do the same thing over and over again.
- A Critical Problem Takes up Too Much Time - Find the critical problem where solving a problem takes a long time every time the problem occurs.
- A Critical Problem Forces People to Solve It Using Their Own System - Find the critical problem where people are solution-aware and have already created their own simple systems to solve the problem.
- Bonus: A Critical Problem Is Something Companies Hire to Solve - They’ll be willing to pay: if the solution saves them time if the solution saves them money if the solution makes them money If it does all three at the same time, it will be a guaranteed hit. The more your solution provides along these dimensions, the more valuable it will be.
On MVPs: The Do’s and Don’ts of the Minimum Viable Product
It's incredibly hard to time when your MVP is done. Here's the problem: you're much too invested. You have the grand vision of what your product could be. And here you are, looking at a version that is slimmed down to the extent of being unrecognizable.
It will always feel like it's not good enough yet. Here is how you can reframe this perspective: all your customers want is to have one less problem in their lives. They are sitting in front of a bowl of soup with a fork. You have a tiny spoon to offer, but you think you could make a much larger spoon. Your customers will be perfectly happy with the small spoon, because no matter what it can do for them in the future, it will already help them with their bowl of soup, right here and now.
2. The Survival Stage
On annual plans and freemium:
It’s also a highly psychological issue: annual plans are usually discounted and therefore non-refundable. Purchasing such a plan will make your customers want to get value from their subscription immediately and as fast and for as long as possible. There is a sense of commitment to spending a year’s worth of money on a single purchase. While you have to provide the same value you would provide to monthly subscribers, your annual subscribers will feel a stronger commitment to your product and their choice to use it.
You should also discount your yearly subscriptions, for two reasons. First, a cheaper subscription will incentivize customers who like to save on purchases they would make anyway. Second, and this is a much more critical reason, a discounted plan can come with a (clearly visible and communicated) non-refundable clause. This allows you to use the full amount for investing in your business, alleviating the need to hold funds for possible refunds, should the business run into trouble.
Seller Beware: Pricing Models That Can Break Your Business
Finally, freemium plans could cannibalize your paid plans. Every free-plan user is a user who could be on a paid plan if you didn't have a freemium option. Think about it like this: if the customer would have paid, you don't capture their revenue. If they wouldn't have paid anyway, why would you want them as a customer?
The Stability Stage
Customer Exploration: Seeing Through Your Customer’s Eyes:
Ask for an unbiased walkthrough. Make your customers use the product to solve their problem under your observation, best through screen sharing. Ask them to explain to you what they're doing. Act as if you were someone who is seeing the product for the first time. What works well here is asking your customer to explain it as if you were a colleague. The idea here is to remove any bias toward you. The video part of this will be incredibly useful. You can see how quickly customers pick up interface actions and how they interact with your product.
After the walkthrough, ask what pains them. Which needs are not fulfilled? Where are costs too high? Where do they spend more time than they'd like? This is an excellent opportunity for them to reflect on the actions they just took and discover where reality was disconnected from the expectations they might have had.
February 22, 2025
Starts off promising but tails off into over-opinionated slop. Here's why:
1.) Over-optimized for B2B web Software as a Service (SaaS) businesses. Author seems to assume that everyone should build a web service, charge for subscriptions, and build it as if to sell/exit for "life-changing money." This strong lean isn't immediately obvious, but by the time you reach page 398, you get sentences like
"you can build and offer dedicated desktop or mobile applications. Only do this if it's required to use your product efficiently. Building, maintaining, and deploying installable applications is a herculean effort compared to a SaaS product."
... when in fact, it's the opposite, because web products require constant maintenance, package updates, security and login, databases to store customer data, payment providers, and knowledge of multiple web frameworks and programming languages. Most software engineers would actually prefer to write a single app in a single language for a streamlined experience, than constantly manage an unstable full-stack web service with constantly changing standards (HTML/CSS/JS) and regulatory guidelines (EU cookie policy, COPPA, etc). Author clearly doesn't know what he's talking about when comparing industries and software developers.
The uncomfortably strong push for subscription-only business models also raised my doubts:
"Lifetime accounts also attract less-than-desirable customers. The expectations you set up by offering a paid service for life can become insurmountable. With a recurring subscription fee, you can at least defend that a customer has the right to claim your assistance again and again. But what will happen when a customer who paid what in most cases is just a few hundred dollars for lifetime access to a service reaches out to you every few days, holding your attention for hours?"
Dismissing people who want to pay once -- like bootstrapped entrepreneurs! -- as some lowly "less-than-desirable" scum is not the way to build a following. It just alienates people. Much of the book reads as if he just wants a certain type of sheep to buy imperfect stuff, rely on their ignorance or bliss to make a living, and ignore everyone else with peculiar workflows and demands. (Relying on people to forget and fail to cancel their subscription is not an honest business tactic.)
These teachings and attitudes will alienate hardcore consumers. Author shouldn't stand on a soapbox and advise regular consumer software creators to follow this advice.
2.) Lack of discussion or definition. Services like MailChimp, Canny, Redis, Memcached, RabbitMQ, Apache Kafka, and Intercom are name-dropped without distinguishing them from the lists of others provided. He never defines Comma-Separated Values (CSV), Eisenhower matrices, Kanban roadmaps, or Gantt charts despite them being far from common vocabulary. No images, photos, charts, or visuals to help communicate key concepts. The text will randomly dive web-server-level-technical ("If you need to access certain kinds of data quickly and often but also need to keep it up-to-date, using a Redis instance that all of your containers access is recommended."), then suddenly surface to discuss SCRUM and social media etiquette. The technical discussion needs better introduction, transition, comparisons between alternatives, and implementation-level context, with better organization into dedicated chapters, so we can more easily skip them if we don't care. And don't drop field-specific jargon without defining it. Readers don't all live in the world of spreadsheets or servers.
3.) Overly prescriptive in irrelevant areas. Part of the reason the book slogs on beyond 400 pages is the needless filler: I don't need to be told how to hire people, know every way feature creep may happen, how to detect and filter haters, handle integration with an exhaustive list of mail services like EmailOctopus and GetResponse, write Standard Operating Procedures, or survive COVID. Literally pages and entire chapters dedicated to stating endless hypothetical situations rarely encountered in startup business, and restating the obvious: "During a recession, you want your product to be as simple and focused as possible." (317)
So much wind. Ironically, the author cites the Mom Test and constantly advises us to simplify our product, but doesn't practice what he preaches: The writing has no economy, obvious common-sense advice ("it's easier to keep a customer than it is to find a new one.") is repeated multiple times ad nauseum, and the writing style is long-winded and textbookish. The English isn't wrong or grammatically incorrect, but it reads like someone who likes the sound of his writing too much, to the point of prioritizing completeness over readers' time. Needs to take a course in economy, because you can say the same thing once and save about half the words in this tome.
Advice: If you are building on the web, for a subscription service, read the beginning to understand the mindset and philosophy, then skim the rest or save for the stage when your business grows and stabilizes for sale.
If you are building anything other than a B2B web SaaS product, just pass. More focused, actionable books exist, certainly in the software development space, even for consumer.
1.) Over-optimized for B2B web Software as a Service (SaaS) businesses. Author seems to assume that everyone should build a web service, charge for subscriptions, and build it as if to sell/exit for "life-changing money." This strong lean isn't immediately obvious, but by the time you reach page 398, you get sentences like
"you can build and offer dedicated desktop or mobile applications. Only do this if it's required to use your product efficiently. Building, maintaining, and deploying installable applications is a herculean effort compared to a SaaS product."
... when in fact, it's the opposite, because web products require constant maintenance, package updates, security and login, databases to store customer data, payment providers, and knowledge of multiple web frameworks and programming languages. Most software engineers would actually prefer to write a single app in a single language for a streamlined experience, than constantly manage an unstable full-stack web service with constantly changing standards (HTML/CSS/JS) and regulatory guidelines (EU cookie policy, COPPA, etc). Author clearly doesn't know what he's talking about when comparing industries and software developers.
The uncomfortably strong push for subscription-only business models also raised my doubts:
"Lifetime accounts also attract less-than-desirable customers. The expectations you set up by offering a paid service for life can become insurmountable. With a recurring subscription fee, you can at least defend that a customer has the right to claim your assistance again and again. But what will happen when a customer who paid what in most cases is just a few hundred dollars for lifetime access to a service reaches out to you every few days, holding your attention for hours?"
Dismissing people who want to pay once -- like bootstrapped entrepreneurs! -- as some lowly "less-than-desirable" scum is not the way to build a following. It just alienates people. Much of the book reads as if he just wants a certain type of sheep to buy imperfect stuff, rely on their ignorance or bliss to make a living, and ignore everyone else with peculiar workflows and demands. (Relying on people to forget and fail to cancel their subscription is not an honest business tactic.)
These teachings and attitudes will alienate hardcore consumers. Author shouldn't stand on a soapbox and advise regular consumer software creators to follow this advice.
2.) Lack of discussion or definition. Services like MailChimp, Canny, Redis, Memcached, RabbitMQ, Apache Kafka, and Intercom are name-dropped without distinguishing them from the lists of others provided. He never defines Comma-Separated Values (CSV), Eisenhower matrices, Kanban roadmaps, or Gantt charts despite them being far from common vocabulary. No images, photos, charts, or visuals to help communicate key concepts. The text will randomly dive web-server-level-technical ("If you need to access certain kinds of data quickly and often but also need to keep it up-to-date, using a Redis instance that all of your containers access is recommended."), then suddenly surface to discuss SCRUM and social media etiquette. The technical discussion needs better introduction, transition, comparisons between alternatives, and implementation-level context, with better organization into dedicated chapters, so we can more easily skip them if we don't care. And don't drop field-specific jargon without defining it. Readers don't all live in the world of spreadsheets or servers.
3.) Overly prescriptive in irrelevant areas. Part of the reason the book slogs on beyond 400 pages is the needless filler: I don't need to be told how to hire people, know every way feature creep may happen, how to detect and filter haters, handle integration with an exhaustive list of mail services like EmailOctopus and GetResponse, write Standard Operating Procedures, or survive COVID. Literally pages and entire chapters dedicated to stating endless hypothetical situations rarely encountered in startup business, and restating the obvious: "During a recession, you want your product to be as simple and focused as possible." (317)
So much wind. Ironically, the author cites the Mom Test and constantly advises us to simplify our product, but doesn't practice what he preaches: The writing has no economy, obvious common-sense advice ("it's easier to keep a customer than it is to find a new one.") is repeated multiple times ad nauseum, and the writing style is long-winded and textbookish. The English isn't wrong or grammatically incorrect, but it reads like someone who likes the sound of his writing too much, to the point of prioritizing completeness over readers' time. Needs to take a course in economy, because you can say the same thing once and save about half the words in this tome.
Advice: If you are building on the web, for a subscription service, read the beginning to understand the mindset and philosophy, then skim the rest or save for the stage when your business grows and stabilizes for sale.
If you are building anything other than a B2B web SaaS product, just pass. More focused, actionable books exist, certainly in the software development space, even for consumer.
July 1, 2023
4 out of 5, I really liked it.
If you’re thinking about creating a Saas business, this is a book that I’d put as the third after Built to Sell and E-myth Revisited. Especially as it’s written in about different way.
What I found the most interesting were aspects related to funding and pivoting the idea how to describe and phrase what your business does. If you’re fairly familiar with niche and idea validation, the initial chapters might be a bit boring. Still the rest of the book provides a lot of input for a young entrepreneur.
The worst parts are related to tech. Some of them are geeky or even goofy and this book would benefit from having them removed. Does an entrepreneur really need to know that docker is the thing?
At the end you can find a part that covers exit options. This is a topic that is not discussed enough. I learnt a lot from it, especially the earn outs and malicious agents were covered from an interesting point of view.
Wanna build Saas, do yourself a favor and read this book.
If you’re thinking about creating a Saas business, this is a book that I’d put as the third after Built to Sell and E-myth Revisited. Especially as it’s written in about different way.
What I found the most interesting were aspects related to funding and pivoting the idea how to describe and phrase what your business does. If you’re fairly familiar with niche and idea validation, the initial chapters might be a bit boring. Still the rest of the book provides a lot of input for a young entrepreneur.
The worst parts are related to tech. Some of them are geeky or even goofy and this book would benefit from having them removed. Does an entrepreneur really need to know that docker is the thing?
At the end you can find a part that covers exit options. This is a topic that is not discussed enough. I learnt a lot from it, especially the earn outs and malicious agents were covered from an interesting point of view.
Wanna build Saas, do yourself a favor and read this book.
March 25, 2025
The book offers some good insights, but it has limited examples and is lack of in-depth discussions, largely because the author started writing it right after selling his first successful saas startup.
The real thing to learn is perhaps the mindset required to publish a book with limited experience in the field. It is not to say the author is not a good founder or that he did anything wrong. However his experience doesn't fully encompass the range of topics he tries to cover in this book, making some of the chapters feeling dry and some examples being repeatedly used across the book.
That being said, it is nice to have someone summarize these things for starters. It's worth a read, but don't expect too much.
The real thing to learn is perhaps the mindset required to publish a book with limited experience in the field. It is not to say the author is not a good founder or that he did anything wrong. However his experience doesn't fully encompass the range of topics he tries to cover in this book, making some of the chapters feeling dry and some examples being repeatedly used across the book.
That being said, it is nice to have someone summarize these things for starters. It's worth a read, but don't expect too much.
December 12, 2020
I loved this book.
Arvid goes through every stage of the bootstrapped founder, with the backdrop of having built a successful bootstrapped SaaS with his girlfriend Danielle.
It is a great reference for anyone thinking about starting a SaaS or actively navigating their way through growing a bootstrapped SaaS.
The way he breaks the startup into different phases of growth (preparation, survival, stability and growth) is 🔥. It allows you to focus on any phase you are currently in but also explore the phases you are heading toward.
I have read many books on SaaS and this the top of my list for must reads.
Arvid goes through every stage of the bootstrapped founder, with the backdrop of having built a successful bootstrapped SaaS with his girlfriend Danielle.
It is a great reference for anyone thinking about starting a SaaS or actively navigating their way through growing a bootstrapped SaaS.
The way he breaks the startup into different phases of growth (preparation, survival, stability and growth) is 🔥. It allows you to focus on any phase you are currently in but also explore the phases you are heading toward.
I have read many books on SaaS and this the top of my list for must reads.
January 23, 2021
I really liked the book for a really good perspective of the author(Arvid) on building and managing SaaS business in a bootstrapped, indie way. There are actually tone of resources about some topics covered, and when I was reading, I felt like I kinda new some stuff. But seeing it through the lenses of a small successful bootstrapper gave some more information and proved those techniques are fully applicable on a small scale too(relatively). In some places, I saw author going into too much details, but probably because the book was made for people like him(as he also wrote - 5 year-ago me) - small bootstrappers and engineers, trying to run their projects as effectively as possible.
May 8, 2023
Another book that repeats ideas, which have already been talked about by other authors.
The first part of the book would be the most benefitial for new founders. However, those ideas are in fact common place knowledge among Silicon Valley startups and are even available for free on places such as YCombinator’s website.
So it’s not really clear who the book is even aimed at, as SaaS founders will most likely be aware of the first broader part which talks about finding product-market-fit, while the latter part of the book goes into such specific details that would be relevant only for late-stage startups which are looking to make an exit.
The first part of the book would be the most benefitial for new founders. However, those ideas are in fact common place knowledge among Silicon Valley startups and are even available for free on places such as YCombinator’s website.
So it’s not really clear who the book is even aimed at, as SaaS founders will most likely be aware of the first broader part which talks about finding product-market-fit, while the latter part of the book goes into such specific details that would be relevant only for late-stage startups which are looking to make an exit.
January 2, 2021
A truly wonderful book that cuts right to the chase, crosses the t's and dots the i's. Very actionable and straight to the point advice that is evergreen and doesn't rely on specific tools (like other business related books).
If you are a person with a technical background and an entrepreneurial spirit (either already started a business or dreams to do it), I consider this book to be a "must read" one, because it speaks our language (in contrast to usual business books that speak in a general voice to appeal to a wider audience).
If you are a person with a technical background and an entrepreneurial spirit (either already started a business or dreams to do it), I consider this book to be a "must read" one, because it speaks our language (in contrast to usual business books that speak in a general voice to appeal to a wider audience).
November 8, 2021
Zero to Sold is a terrific read, for tech (SaaS-based) startup founders. For others; not so much. It has plenty of information, the entire process actually, from setting up a bootstrapped business to selling it. But half of the book is relevant only to the SaaS startups.
The book might also be useful to others who would like to work primarily with startups. You'll understand how to handle various operations related to a (tech) startup and thus, prove to be an invaluable asset to the startup you're a part of.
The book might also be useful to others who would like to work primarily with startups. You'll understand how to handle various operations related to a (tech) startup and thus, prove to be an invaluable asset to the startup you're a part of.
April 7, 2022
This is well written and was recommended to me as I’m growing my own business. If it has a fault then it’s that it’s really, really focused on growing a software business (and doesn’t pretend to be otherwise). I think my colleague who recommended it didn’t quite realise how focused it was - if you have a business in another industry you want to grow, there’s useful stuff in here but you really have to root it out.
Basically I was reading the wrong book - a good one so I gave it four stars, but the wrong book!
Basically I was reading the wrong book - a good one so I gave it four stars, but the wrong book!
February 19, 2021
I rated it 3 stars because it was extremely dull and gave details for every little step along the way. I’m not sure if providing such an in-depth book is useful for most people thinking of starting a company.
It is better to inspire them and give general guidelines rather than bore them with all these mundane details.
It is better to inspire them and give general guidelines rather than bore them with all these mundane details.
January 13, 2024
While sometimes a bit of a slog, this book gave a thorough guide to starting, running, and selling a bootstrapped business. Aspects include finding market fit, validating the solution and product, using third-party software, being responsive to customers, dealing with feature creep, finding the right pricing model, making it easy to onboard employees.
July 13, 2020
Absolutely required reading for anyone building a tech company
This is the best, most comprehensive, overview of building a tech company in 2020 and beyond. It covers absolutely everything you could wish to know in an engaging and thorough way. Must read!
This is the best, most comprehensive, overview of building a tech company in 2020 and beyond. It covers absolutely everything you could wish to know in an engaging and thorough way. Must read!
October 26, 2020
Excellent book for anyone running or thinking about starting a tech business. You would benefit from knowledge in this book even if you are not in the SaaS business. I have gained many valuable lessons that I can apply to my tech services (cliowebsites.com) venture. Highly recommended!
December 1, 2020
Must read for entrepreneurs
Whether you are looking to start to build something or already have, this book is a must read. I would go on to suggest that people should start with this book.
Whether you are looking to start to build something or already have, this book is a must read. I would go on to suggest that people should start with this book.
March 7, 2021
This is a pretty complete guide in all the topics you come across when starting, running and selling a company. I would say it is more an overview of lean startup ideas rather than a
Visionary book. I will probably scroll through it again.
Visionary book. I will probably scroll through it again.
September 18, 2021
Top Buch für angehende Bootstrapper mit vielen hilfreichen Tipps. Inspiration findet sich in jedem Kapitel. Selbst spätere Kapitel bieten hilfreiche Tipps für Bootstrapper in einem späteren Stadium ihres Businesses.
Das Buch ist eine absolute Empfehlung!
Das Buch ist eine absolute Empfehlung!
October 21, 2021
Got about halfway through.
Very good in terms of information density for a business book. Just not all that relevant to me at the moment; I struggled to care about what Kahl was speaking about.
One I'll probably pick up again in the future.
Very good in terms of information density for a business book. Just not all that relevant to me at the moment; I struggled to care about what Kahl was speaking about.
One I'll probably pick up again in the future.
November 4, 2021
Super basic book about founding a company. I recommend reading Running Lean or Lean Startup instead of this.
Some topics like how to measure market size are just opinions and no concrete advice.
Maybe i was expecting something else.
Some topics like how to measure market size are just opinions and no concrete advice.
Maybe i was expecting something else.
November 18, 2022
Great read
I loved about it that it doesn’t start (nor it continues) as a sell pitch through out the book. He’s concise:
- This is what we did
- This worked for us
- This didn’t
- Everything else I ignore.
I loved about it that it doesn’t start (nor it continues) as a sell pitch through out the book. He’s concise:
- This is what we did
- This worked for us
- This didn’t
- Everything else I ignore.
March 24, 2024
A powerhouse of information, delivered in a captivating read
This book manages to condense a wealth of information into a surprisingly engaging read. Author expertly weaves together complex subjects, making them accessible and interesting for even casual readers.
This book manages to condense a wealth of information into a surprisingly engaging read. Author expertly weaves together complex subjects, making them accessible and interesting for even casual readers.
October 28, 2020
Great book for anybody after a blueprint for starting their own startup in 2020.
November 12, 2020
A must read book if you’re interested in bootstrapping SaaS products.
Arvid explain really well all different phases your business can go through (based on his own experience).
Arvid explain really well all different phases your business can go through (based on his own experience).
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