How the finder works
The finder runs in your browser and does not save or send your answers. It scores every entry in the library against what you told it and shows the top few. These are its rules, in the order it applies them.
- It has to touch your problem. If you picked one or two problems, an entry must be tagged with at least one of them. Everything else is left out.
- Problems count most. Each of your problems the entry covers adds 5 points. Covering both adds a 3-point bonus.
- Then your stage. An entry tagged with your stage adds 4 points. One tagged only for the stage just before or after yours adds 1 point, because neighbouring advice is often still useful.
- Time shapes the list. "One talk" gives you a single pick and knocks 2 points off anything longer than 45 minutes. "A few" gives three picks, "a weekend" gives six, and skipping the question gives three.
- Ties go to the newer entry. When two entries score the same, the more recently published one comes first.
- Both problems get a turn. If you picked two problems and the playlist has room for more than one entry, the finder makes sure at least one entry covers each problem, swapping out the last pick if it has to.
The stages
| Idea | You have a problem you want to solve, or several, and no product yet. idea |
|---|---|
| Pre-revenue | You are building or about to launch, and nobody has paid you yet. pre-revenue |
| First customers | A handful of people pay you. Most of what you know is guesswork. first-customers |
| Under $10k MRR | Revenue is real but not yet a salary. Growth is the whole job. under-10k-mrr |
| Growing | Past $10k MRR. Channels, pricing, team and systems start to matter more than code. growing |
| Selling or exiting | You are weighing an acquisition offer, a sale or what comes after. selling-or-exiting |
The problems
| Idea validation | Most failed products were built for a problem nobody would pay to fix. idea-validation |
|---|---|
| Pricing | Bootstrappers tend to charge too little and change prices too rarely. pricing |
| Positioning | Positioning decides who your product is for and what you compare it against. positioning |
| SEO | Search still sends steady, compounding traffic to small software companies, but the rules keep moving, now with AI answers in the mix. seo |
| Content | Content is the channel most bootstrappers can afford. content |
| Paid ads | Ads can buy you speed, and they can also burn a small budget in a week. paid-ads |
| Sales | Plenty of technical founders would rather do anything than sell. sales |
| Onboarding | A signup is not a customer yet. onboarding |
| Churn | Churn decides how high a subscription business can grow. churn |
| Hiring | Your first hires change the company more than any feature. hiring |
| Founder health | Running a small company alone is hard on the head. founder-health |
| Product | Deciding what to build next is the job that never ends. product |
| Acquisitions and exits | Selling a company is the biggest financial decision most founders make, often with little practice. acquisitions-and-exits |
Where the tags come from
We tag each entry by hand after reading or listening to its official page. A talk can carry several stages and up to three problems. The tags are a judgement call; if you think one is wrong, the full library lets you browse past them.