Gumroad founder's framework for a bootstrapped business - Sahil Lavingia, Gumroad

Sahil Lavingia is the founder of Gumroad, the platform that allows creators to sell products online. The beating heart of the creator economy. You'll likely have heard Sahil's story about his failure to build a billion dollar company with an article that went viral, but let me summarise for those that haven't.Sahil founded Gumroad in 2011, aiming to build the next unicorn, leaving Pinterest where he was employee #2. He raised $1.1m from angels, then $7m more in 2012. Things started growing, then they didn't. Sahil laid off 75% of the company to keep the product alive, moved to Provo, Utah to figure where to take Gumroad from that point. Almost a decade later Gumroad is growing quicker than ever, making millions in revenue and helping creators make a living online.Sahil has just launched his book, The Minimalist Entrepreneur, where he shares a decade of learnings on how to build a profitable, sustainable business and how entrepreneurs can do more with less to make more impact on the world.👉 I'm giving away 5 copies of Sahil's book on Twitter, enter here.What we covered on this episode:Sahil’s approach to fundingBootstrapping vs VCWhy Gumroad runs so differently to most companiesWhy longevity has helped GumroadSahil’s book: The Minimalist EntrepreneurBuilding a project in a weekend: Verification LettersLivestream of building Verification LettersThe framework for starting a businessWhy you should start and then learnBarriers people have to starting their businessFear of failureImportance of writingRecommendationsBook: Predictably Irrational by Dan ArielyPodcast: All-In PodcastIndie Hacker: NavalFollow SahilTwitterWebsiteFollow Me👉 Listen to my new podcast, No More Mondays.TwitterIndie Bites TwitterPersonal WebsiteBuy A Wallet2 Hour Podcast CourseSponsor - ilo AnalyticsSahil has 280k followers on Twitter and he sure knows the tweets that will engage his audience. If you too want to get a deeper understanding of what engages your followers on Twitter, you should check out ilo Analytics.ilo helps you easily see which kind of tweets get more impressions, likes, profile clicks and more so you can get grow your Twitter audience. ilo's has beautiful graphs for the most important metrics for both tweets and threads will be sure to help you build your following.Head to ilo.so or hit the link in the show notes and use the code INDIEBITES to get 25% off your ilo subscription for life.