Your Guide to Building a Quiet Startup

"If you don't know where you are going, you'll end up someplace else."

– Yogi Berra

A Guide to the Guide

Hi, I’m David 👋 Welcome to The Guide.

This page is designed to serve as a "table of contents" of sorts. It will help you orient and find your way along your quiet startup journey.

As a seasoned bootstrapper and technical founder, I've built dozens of online businesses for myself and my clients. Now I'm sharing what I've learned with you.

If you’re curious, feel free to take a minute to read more about me or check out what I’m working on right now.

Don’t worry, I’ll wait here 😉

Orientation

Throughout the site you’ll find my writings about indie startups, what it takes to succeed as an indie founder, and the tactics and strategies that work best for quiet personalities.

The site itself is organized a bit differently than most. Instead of the standard blog format combining all types of posts, I break them up by type.

Articles

Articles are my long-form posts. These longer, well-developed pieces contain my detailed analysis, opinion essays, and similar.

Occasionally, you'll come across article stubs, which serve as placeholders for articles I intend to more fully develop out in the future. A "movie trailer" for the article, if you will.

Notes

Notes, on the other hand, are brief updates related to what I'm thinking about day to day. They're tidbits of ideas, waiting to fully blossom. Typically a bit longer than a social media post, but shorter than a full-blown article.

If you want to more fully understand what you can do with them, check out why I have notes.

Your Startup Puzzle

Building a startup is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle.

Both have hundreds of little pieces that must fit together perfectly to create the finished product.

However, unlike puzzles, startups have three different types of pieces:

  1. Tech: website, product, integrations, automation, etc.
  2. Business: marketing, sales, copywriting, traction strategy, etc.
  3. Design: UI/UX, logo, graphics, fonts, colors, etc.

Most founders are only good at assembling one or two types of puzzle pieces when they first start.

To create a successful startup you need to be good enough at all three.

You don’t ever need to reach expert status in any of these skill sets (nor should you), but you do need to reach a minimum level of proficiency.

In the past, entrepreneurs found co-founders or employees to fill in the gaps. However, as tools (and AI) become more and more accessible, the need to hire internal specialists has rapidly declined.

This guide aims to help you get a “lay of the land” so you can find the missing pieces of your puzzle.

Fundamentals

These articles form the foundation of my thinking around quiet startups. Read them first.

Wanna go further down the rabbit hole? Check out these books I recommend to all quiet founders.

When You’re Ready

If this all resonates with you, I've outlined a few paths you can take below.

While not strictly necessary, these options will provide you with additional value as a founder and help your startup grow faster.

  • Subscribe to the newsletter. Get my latest posts with hype-free guidance for validating ideas, gaining traction, and monetizing your projects.
  • Book a 1:1 strategy call with me. Get personalized guidance about your startup and what you're struggling most with right now. This call is free because I genuinely enjoy chatting with and helping other indie founders. It's not a sales call and I'm only offering it for a limited time (in the future it'll be behind a paywall).
  • Consider supporting the site. Help support independent publishing and quiet founders everywhere break through the hype and noise of the internet.

I hope you've found this guide useful. I'll keep it updated as I further develop the content and the site.

For now, feel free to explore 🧭

To your quiet success,
– David