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I'm Sahil, founder of Gumroad and author of The Minimalist Entrepreneur. AMA.
Started as a weekend project in 2011, Gumroad has grown–with its fair share of ups and downs–to helping 94,000+ creators earn over $500,000,000.
In February 2019, I published a Medium essay, “Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company,” that struck a chord with thousands of aspiring entrepreneurs who’d much rather build a sustainable business like Gumroad than chase a binary billion-dollar-or-bust outcome.
I wrote The Minimalist Entrepreneur to help anyone start, build and scale their own sustainable business.
AMA!
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@microdesignn I would "start with community" and only then build a product. If you're having a hard time with your existing product, I'd just build a new one.
Hey Sahil! Thanks for doing the AMA with the Product Hunt community!
You recently took a new identity as an author. What's the most difficult thing you encountered when writing The Minimalist Entrepreneur?
@5harath Believing that the world needed another business book; believing I was the right person to write one; believing that I could write a super-dense book, without fluff.
@gouthamj In the ten years since I've started Gumroad, I've learned that some of my favorite people in the world are entrepreneurs and business owners. So I would build a product to serve them–especially those who are remote, and async first, and folks not as close to the Silicon Valley "bubble."
Hi Sahil - Great to have you here. I've been following the Gumroad story for awhile and appreciate you taking the time to share knowledge.
One thing I've admittedly found hard to reconcile while trying to apply learnings from your story is that the path you took to make Gumroad a profitable indie business isn't all that replicable for other founders (e.g. raise $10M and then have your investors give you all the equity back for free)
Obviously, every one's path is different while building a successful business, so you can't really copy anyone. But with that in mind, if you were to start Gumroad now without that $10M of initial VC funding to get it off the ground, what would be your strategy today if you were bootstrapping or working off a much smaller seed round?
@andygcook Super fair question! I only wrote to share my story, not for others to copy. If I didn't have $10M in funding, I would do what I did in 2015 when I ran out of funding, just right at the beginning: leave SF, minimize my personal burn rate, and hire contractors to scale.
Hey Sahil,
your product development processes have been a big inspiration for us, and helped us to build our product in a much saner, paced and focused way. A game-changer for us was the process you outlined in your chat with Josh Pigford about your Tentpole launches:
I am curious if you have anything written down about the way people decide to work on projects, or generally a deeper dive into those processes. Is that laid out in the "minimalist entrpreneur"?
So far I understand that everyone is basically freely choosing to work on stuff that is in the pipeline as "specs complete".
How do you make sure that things progress well and don't cause clogging because of dependent tasks, if a person taking on a task is only able to work 2 days a week?
Also, how are people compensated right now in the upside of the long term project?
From what I understand most people work with a very high salary, but no long term upside e.g. in the form of stocks?
I am curious to learn more about the reasons for applying this compensation model, and how you align for long-term commitment without sharing of long-term upside?
Thanks so much for your continued insights and desire to share the things that help other founders get to a good place too 🙏
@oliversauter It's more art than science, but I often use 4 heuristics:
1. What's the worst thing about the product, can we improve it?
2. What's the best thing about the product, can we make it even better?
3. What's the first piece of friction a user happens upon?
4. What's the bottleneck that prevents our most successful users from being even more successful?
Rinse, repeat. Ultimately you need experience (and some data) to make better decisions.
Hi Sahil, what's the next thing you are looking forward to innovating on? Also, what's something you think can be innovated but don't have the time to?
Hey, big props for what you've built, I invested in March.
At what point of the gumroad journey did you start making personal investments and what was their ticket size?
@simonsovic After Gumroad was profitable, in 2017 (six years). In hindsight, wish I started earlier.
Hi, Sahil! What do you think is the most exciting innovation in the future of income for indie creators?
Thanks!
Hey Sahil, do you think the billion-dollar-or-bust pressure comes from the businesses that people choose to work on that makes them need huge scale to succeed? Or rather a belief in the founders that that's what all successful startups looks like?
@oliver_kraftman It's because the failure rate is high, and so the winners have to pay for the losers (if you're an investor).
@shl thanks! So pressure from investors transfers to founders? Your article suggested you put the pressure on yourself at the start of Gumroad
Hey Sahil, I have started building projects recently and now I am gonna make "12 projects in 12 months" the ideas I have are more info products circling around curation.
You say, "Just make 10 projects" and do you think this could be a good start to build? (Because I am clueless about the quality of my project ideas) Thanks.
Hi @shl to be honest, I didn't read (yet) your essay and maybe you answer the question there. I am wondering what did the first version look like? How fare did you develop the product before launching in one weekend?
I'm currently writing my book about how to build ethical startups. In the past, I chased the idea of building a big startup, getting funded, and making lots of money until my first investor came in and ruined every piece of me then I have to disappear to recover and rebuild myself and as aimed to self-fund everything I do otherwise let it fade. Lost trust and that's probably a hard thing to recover, probably the only thing that would unite me with other people is ethics.
I just launched my product today and it seems like it is going to be another failure so I have already given in to that.
Say, a person like me who lost his entire network, and has to start from zero again and have no reach.
How would you go about launching your products with no audience?
@tarek_besbes I would "start with community." (And if you've already determined failure on day one, you need to revisit your commitments.)
@shl as building a community takes a lot of time and that's what I'm currently doing. Failure to me happens from day to day based on the tasks that I need to complete, I wouldn't refer to it at a large scale or a complete absolute, for example, it goes like "Okay, ProductHunt Launch Failed, what's next". As for my commitments, I have spent a significant amount of time so walking away is not an option regardless of what might happen, that's related to my internal beliefs.
Congrats on the new book Sahil and looking forward to getting a copy here soon! Keep moving the good forward friend!
Launching soon!
Hey Sahil, I love Gumroad and I have read a lot about you in indiehackers so I'm a big fan. I have a few questions, the overall theme is what is your advice to programmers that want to start a company today?
And more specifically:
1) Would you sell before building?
2) If you build, when do you know when to stop, i.e. when do you know that you have an MVP?
3) Given the funding landscape, would you raise VC (and then attempt to buy them years later like you did with Gumroad) or bootstrap?
Thanks!
@davidcrro
1. I'd solve my most painful problem first. Build → sell → market.
2. You never stop. But you move onto selling once you have a "quanta of utility."
3. Depends on what you're building.
The drive, passion, and integrity you have of putting the interest of your creators above your own personal self interest is amazing and inspiring.
I think many entrepreneurs are obsessed with raising large amounts of money at high valuations asap rather than focusing on sustainability and adding value to their existing users. It's a flaw in SV culture to grow fast or die. I wonder how many other startups adding important value to people's lives would still exist today if they followed your example rather than ending up in the graveyard. Some might have ended up at 1B+ valuations even if it took many more years to get there. It takes courage to take the hard but right decisions when things don't go your way.
I'm confident that as long as you are a part of Gumroad, it will eventually be a unicorn and I'm looking forward to that article when it comes out. Thank you for teaching us a great lesson on perseverance, sheer will, and determination.
The Minimalist Entrepreneur is a good book for founders, i found the intro very insightful and a useful guide.
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