How to Start a Sucessful Bootstrapped Web App Business

After recording 87 episodes of TechZing it occurred to me that we now have a goldmine of audio information about how to start a successful bootstrapped web app business. I’ve assembled our best shows on the subject into an 12 hour audio seminar!

If you are really serious about going out on your own, leaving your day job, and starting your very own successful web app business you owe it to yourself to listen. Each show is an interview with a guest about their successful business. As they tell their story each entrepreneur teaches us valuable lessons. I’ve grouped shows into over arching themes to make them easy to navigate.

Deciding on an Idea

If you’re just starting out and need to decide what your new business will be these shows have some very useful information. Also check out the Patrick Mckenzie interview in the marketing section.

Rob Walling / The Micropreneur Academy

[audio:http://techzinglive.com/mp3/techzing-056.mp3]

Thomas Thurston / Modeling Disruption

[audio:http://techzinglive.com/mp3/techzing-076.mp3]

Building Your Idea

One of the reasons why web apps fail is because they look bad and are difficult to use. This interview with Luke can help you build a product that is more likely to be successful because of a better UI.

Luke Wroblewski / The User Interface Is The Product

[audio:http://techzinglive.com/mp3/techzing-087.mp3]

Launching & Marketing Your Idea

Once you’ve built your app you need to start bringing in customers. These interviews have lots of information about how to go about that!

Patrick McKenzie / The Long Tail of Optimization

[audio:http://techzinglive.com/mp3/techzing-079.mp3]

Gabriel Weinberg / DuckDuckGo

[audio:http://techzinglive.com/mp3/techzing-068.mp3]

Peldi / Balsamiq Mockups

[audio:http://techzinglive.com/mp3/techzing-004.mp3]

Turning Your Idea Into a $1m+ Business

Once your app is turning over a few thousand dollars a month you might want to think about turning it into a larger business. Here’s two interviews with entrepreneurs who did exactly that, and share their lessons learned.

Central Desktop / Relentless Execution

[audio:http://techzinglive.com/mp3/techzing-034.mp3]

Jason Cohen / Smart Bear Software

[audio:http://techzinglive.com/mp3/techzing-012.mp3]

What To Do After You’ve Made Millions

Once you’ve built a company and sold it for more than $20 million what do you do? Derek Sivers muses on this question with us in this excellent interview.