My sixth year as a bootstrapped founder

I think people (and the founder) are focusing on yearly profits as their remuneration and comparing it to a salary... but the reality is you're creating a company that should be valued (and eventually sell) for 7-15X Earnings - and you really should be looking at that increase in value vs your increase in profits. In reality your net worth went up by over $1.5 million in the last year, in addition to earning 236k - that is the actual value you created for yourself in the last year and not the 236k you cashflowed.

I find it redeeming that despite having a gift for development - software and hardware - the biggest factors affecting profitability and growth here are things that most MBAs would do in a business quite regularly (outsourcing design/packaging/fulfillment, streamlining costs, doing price elasticity experiments, polling customers and markets for product improvement).

I enjoyed seeing the inverted perspective that product/engineering is straightforward and low risk but things like optimizing fulfillment and operating costs is a new exciting endeavor.

One tip I suggest doing is leveraging google ads to figure out features that customers are willing to pay for before you build them... if they're clicking the ad they are searching for it and interested in buying it. Start a few very low cap campaigns calling out features you are thinking of building into the product, and see which one get's the most impressions and clicks per marketing dollar and focus on that. The added advantage is you know it will be easier to buy advertising for it once the feature is done.

No way that 7, 15x is realistic. From my previous 2 startups none were sold for more than 4x. And these were healthy growing +10m businesses. I am not sure where you got those numbers from. I am curious.

Ouch. Businesses sell for more than 4x all the time. There are countless examples of that.

Businesses sell for 0x and Infinityx all the time. There are countless examples of that.

But bootstrapped business with growth rate for 7x+ (non-trivial) revenue are uncommon.

4x may be "ouch" for a VC but not a bootstrapper.

The last startup I was at that sold 'only' made the owners millionaires, when they were hoping to retire.

If you're in your thirties or forties, a million bucks won't even get you a school teacher's lifestyle for the rest of your life. A million bucks makes the rest of your work life low-stress, but not non-existent. You still have to work, you just don't have to worry about paying rent, or getting exploited by your boss. You can always quit, and you can always say no (one of the reasons some bosses like a hint of desperation on their employees)

They bought water view condos, one got his teeth fixed, and then they had to go right back to work.