Foreword

by JASON COHEN, Founder, WP Engine

Is it OK to want to get rich with your own two hands, beholden to no one, especially not to some already rich person who wants to trade a huge chunk of the reward for a check and some advice from the cheap seats?

Is it OK to be obsessed with your work and ideas yet not want to “change the world” or “put a dent in the universe?” Is it OK if you want to make a low-chance-of-success career decision mostly because you hate being told what to do and therefore cannot, in your own words, be successful in a “real job?”

Is it OK to have the hubris of thinking your product is better than the other hundred already in-market and that it makes sense for a 101st to exist? Is it OK to spend every waking hour (including two in the morning) obsessing about your project rather than about other people, turning yourself inside out even to the detriment of health and relationships?

It doesn’t matter whether it’s OK, it’s what you’re going to do. You’ve already decided to do it; that’s why you’re holding this book. You’ve already decided you have to do it, whether it’s justified or not, whether for a higher purpose or a simple force of personality.

Congratulations, that makes you a founder. (Or should I say, condolences.) Join the party.

It is a peculiar party, its members bonded by experiences that can be explained but not truly understood by those who have not experienced it for themselves, like becoming a parent. Experiences like quitting your job and finding those you count as friends or family becoming doubters waiting—maybe even hoping—for you to fail.

The elation the first time a customer gives you money for something that you created, which you can hardly believe they did considering how bad the product is.

The trepidation of the first time you hire someone, where the family of a fellow human being is now dependent on you, and suddenly you realize that payroll is a permanent inexorable weight, a new stressor and a visceral demonstration that the line between “business” and “personal” is very wide and very fuzzy.

The gut-wrenching first time you fire someone, having worsened the situation by waiting far too long, having no idea how to be constructive, giving explanations that are nonsensical because they are not the true reason, knowing you are putting their entire family at risk, and afterward the others simply mutter “what took you so long?”

The constant barrage of customer complaints and compliments, of showing up randomly on Twitter and in newsletters, whether for good or ill, of judgments from anyone and everyone about how stupid it is that you did this or how genius it was that you did that, which incidentally they’re wrong about half the time, although it can be hard to tell which is which.

So you possess the personality defect that drives you to join this coterie; now comes the hard work. Fortunately for you, Rob Walling has been one of the most active members of this party for a few decades, having built several successful companies and, through investment, has seen the ups and downs of more than one hundred. He distilled this experience into a book of wisdom, exactly what you need to tackle the work now in front of you.

Most of what you’ll need to do, you’ve never done before, and you’re not good at it, although you think you are. Probably you’ll be better than most people at doing it for the first time because you’re highly motivated and because the work is connected to other work that you do understand. So, you don’t know marketing, but you do know your customer; it’s better to write clearly and directly to a person you deeply understand than to have a degree in advertising.

Still, you’re not good at it, whether or not you think you are a genius at everything. This delusion of competence is helpful in overcoming the otherwise overwhelming barriers to embarking on this improbable project. And in some aspects, your unacknowledged deficiencies aren’t detrimental—you don’t need to be an expert in E&O insurance when no customers are depending on your software, nor in accounting when there’s no revenue to account for.

But there are key areas, early in the life of a bootstrapped company, where lack of competence is a leading cause of death. Dozens of twittering successful bootstrappers agree, for example, that picking the right market was the primary cause of their success; many self-reported autopsies blame the converse. Pricing is another example; in my case, the moment when hyper-growth ignited in my most successful company was exactly coincident with a customer-inspired revamp of our pricing and packaging.

Focusing your attention and your learning on these specific areas that are covered in this book—market, pricing, and also marketing/sales, team, metrics, and personal mindset—gives you the best chance to succeed. Success is still not guaranteed, but these are the areas where it’s most vital to make good decisions. You can make the best possible decisions in poker and still lose; that’s the nature of systems—like poker and startups—that are equal parts skill and luck. In such systems, you must be diligent and intentional in making the best possible decisions, recognizing that luck is a real but uncontrollable force. And you need the wisdom that can only come from seeing the movie play out hundreds of times in different ways, which is exactly what Rob has done, not only through direct experience but as a writer, thinker, interviewer, and synthesizer. There is no better way to maximize your probability of winning.

You chose this path because you don’t like to be told what to do, and here’s a book telling you what to do. But it’s not forcing you to do things. It’s giving you Cheat Codes in the areas that are crucial to get right and in which—for the good of the company—you have to admit you are not a world expert.

And if you discover any of it wasn’t right for you, you can wave your thriving business in Rob’s face and tell him how wrong he was. Won’t that be fun?

So read this book. Use it to become a better version of the person you already are, and give you and your business the best chance at success.

JASON COHEN, Founder, WP Engine