From open source side project to bootstrapped solo business | David Boyne @EventCatalog

saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies.In episode #15 of season 6, Anna Nadeina talks with David Boyne, founder of EventCatalog, an open-source documentation tool specifically designed for event-driven architectures (EDAs), allowing teams to document, visualize, and discover services, events, schemas, and producers/consumers.Dave Boyne left a senior AWS developer advocate role — the highest salary he'd ever earned — and jumped into bootstrapping with 12 months of runway, a self-hosted documentation tool, and no clear business model. Fourteen months later, Event Catalog has crossed $300K in revenue, and Dave reached personal sustainability in just 8 months.In this episode:→ Why Dave chose a self-hosted license key model over SaaS — and why it made procurement 10x easier→ How he reached sustainability in 8 months without raising a single dollar→ His AI-powered content and coding workflows as a solo founder→ The post-sale mistake he almost didn't catch: ignoring renewals while chasing new sales→ Why he raised prices twice — and the 20% drop-off rule he uses to know when pricing is right→ How he uses LinkedIn to build trust with developers without ever leading with the product----------- Episode's Chapters -----------0:00 — Introduction & Guest Background1:55 — From AWS to Bootstrapping5:00 — Marketing on LinkedIn7:25 — What is Event Catalog?9:39 — Business Model: Open Core Over SaaS14:23 — Building with AI as a Solo Founder38:08 — Biggest Win & Biggest Failure41:46 — Founder Hacks & Closing ThoughtsThis one's for solo founders and technical builders who want to see what the zero-to-$300K journey actually looks like.David - https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-boyne/EventCatalog - https://www.eventcatalog.dev/