I have built one bootstrapped tech business and sold it. I am now running a venture-backed (seed-funded) data science company that is cash-flow positive and does not need growth rounds to scale.
We have been cashflow positive for 18 months now.
The secret is figuring out a channel that works and then scaling it. It’s not about finding 10 channels but 1 or 2 and wringing every piece of efficiency out of it.
For us, cold emailing has worked wonderfully. It’s a zero-waste, low-cost approach because you choose the targets. So every response is an MQL.
I wrote an ebook and how this channel has worked for us and why it is replicable.
To give you an idea, in the last 18 months, we have earned over $300K in deals that came through this channel (with a marketing investment of under $20,000).
I am writing this as a way to give hope to bootstrapped entrepreneurs (especially the tech ones) that cold emailing is not bad after all, if you know how to run and scale it the right way.
As a new user, I cannot post links here to the ebook. But if you’d like it, I can respond as a comment.