In addition to entrepreneurial loneliness, many founders also find themselves stuck in their own head trying to solve increasingly difficult challenges. Even the best founders benefit from a breath of fresh air and new pairs of eyes on their challenges. “But Alex, I don’t have anyone like that in my life!” I can hear you say. Well, dear reader, that’s why you need a mastermind. Read on for what to expect, how to start, and the major benefits to being in a mastermind.

TinySeed and MicroConf produce an annual State of Independent SaaS (SOIS) report. We’ve surveyed hundreds of bootstrapped founders and gained some interesting insights, and we’re here to today to share what we see are the SaaS trends for 2022.

Bootstrapping tends to get a bad rap from investors and founders alike. But Mailchimp has proven that when you get it right, unbelievable success can follow. The question you’re probably asking is, “how did they do it?” Here’s how Mailchimp grew from humble beginnings to a $12 billion dollar acquisition (and the lessons you can take away from their strategy).

There are so many tech stack roundup articles online. Many contain the most popular tech tools with little consideration being given to some of the newest players on the scene. This article gives these new players the spotlight they deserve while providing startup founders with viable options to meet their growing needs.

A firmly held belief in the venture capital world is that founding teams perform better than solo founders. It’s believed that founding teams offer a breadth of experience and industry skills that a solo founder can never possess alone.

While that may be true, founding teams also experience a wide range of challenges. Data shows that 60% of new ventures fail because of team issues. Also, data shows that solo founder teams bring in more revenue than founding team pairs. This article strives to debunk the myths surrounding investment in founding teams.

Mailchimp’s historic exit not only demonstrates the power of bootstrapping but also reinforces TinySeed’s investment thesis. Nearly any other kind of business would need to raise tens of millions to attain a billion-dollar exit like Mailchimp. But, given the capital-efficient nature of B2B SaaS, Mailchimp was able to achieve a venture-level return without significant dilution.

Over time successful venture firms raise larger and larger funds, quickly running into the 99 investor limit, and forcing their investment minimum higher. These high minimums concentrate this wealth creation opportunity to super high net worth individuals and institutional investors, excluding accredited investors who cannot afford to write such a large check. We’re looking into how we can change this law.

If you read the mainstream tech press, it feels like there is a constant stream of startup acquisitions in the news. The sheer volume of these stories can make you think that you hear about most of the startup acquisitions that happen. Although our gut feel was that the software industry was much larger than most assume, we didn’t really have a good grasp of how much larger. So we decided to find out.