3 Lessons Learned from a Bootstrapped Healthtech Startup

I decided to write this as we went from bootstrapped to finally making our first dollar a couple weeks ago. Here are my top 3 lessons learned so far. This is unique to my journey and won’t be applicable to all. Hope it helps someone. 1. Dont chase funding till you actually need it. We spent months applying to YC, Techstars, you-name-it. This took a huge toll on mental bandwidth and diverted time away from developing our product. Sure that trade-off is fine if you need the cash, but we still had a solid runway left with bootstrapping. So it’s absolutely critical to ask yourself - “what would we do with $500k YC money?”. If you dont have a solid justiticaiton for every dollar spent, don’t do it. Investors are looking for highly positive ROI so now you’re on the hook and have stepped into the perptual cycle of raising. But I def recommend doing an application every ~6 months. Not solely for the purpose of raising, but to take yourself out of the trenches and think higher level. These apps often ask things like “what unique value does your product provide? whats your target customer look like? hows the competitive landscape evolving?”. We gotta revisit these seemingly basic (and painful) questions on a regular basis as our busineses evolve so so quickly. 2. “Do things that don't scale” - Paul Graham. As painful as it is to knock on doors and scour reddit everyday, I dedicate a portion of my every day to this. Why? You never know what gems you’ll discover. For example, I spent weeks looking over the shoulders of friends and collegues while I forced them to use our app lol. Doesn’t sound like the best use of time but the real time and genuine insights were critical. I watched lots of folks ignore our notificaitons, fumble through onboarding, or use our features improperly. This isn’t their fault - its ours and each moment turned into a fix, update, or new opportunity. 3. Be prepared for trolls and haters (you might actually learn from them). Youre going to get unfair, highly emotional, or just hateful feedback. Guaranteed. A redditor messaged me out of the blue and claimed we were stealing their data and selling it? Followed up and no response. Another user accused us of a ‘bait-and-switch’ after we completed our public beta trial. All betas must come to an end and again, no response. You’re going to hear everything. Take a deep breath and respond with grace and respect. You might actually learn a thing or two. For example, a highly abrasive user said we and our privacy policy were “lazy”. I asked for more details and they made a good point - there wasnt any need to do data computing on our servers. For more robust security, keep everything on device. And thats what we did. Hoping we're less lazy now haha. Thanks for listening if you made it this far. Harry Cofounder of Ohms (https://www.yourohms.com)