Month 14 of the journey

One solo founder.
One open-source product.
The road to $1M ARR.

I quit my job to bootstrap EventCatalog to $1M ARR. This is my diary. Real experiences, decisions, and lessons learned, captured as bite-sized notes.

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A Bootstrapper's Diary

by David Boyne

Latest entries

15 entries and counting. New entry every week.

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Apr 2, 2026 Mindset

Why You Have to Stop to Move Forward

Why You Have to Stop to Move Forward

The pressure to keep shipping is real, but the smartest thing you can do for your company is step away from it.

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Mar 23, 2026 Mindset

Why I Treat AI as a Teammate Not a Strategy

Why I Treat AI as a Teammate Not a Strategy

AI was derailing my focus until I stopped chasing trends and started treating it like a teammate on my solo team.

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Mar 13, 2026 Mindset

Why Building Solo Is the Hardest Thing I've Ever Done and What Keeps Me Going Anyway

Why Building Solo Is the Hardest Thing I've Ever Done and What Keeps Me Going Anyway

What nobody tells you about the psychological grind of bootstrapping alone, and how to stay in the game.

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Feb 27, 2026 Mindset

Why Being a One Person Company Is Actually a Superpower

Why Being a One Person Company Is Actually a Superpower

Being small feels like a weakness until you realize it's the thing your customers actually value.

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Feb 13, 2026 Mindset

Why I Chose to Bootstrap EventCatalog and What It Taught Me About Defining Success on Your Own Terms

Why I Chose to Bootstrap EventCatalog and What It Taught Me About Defining Success on Your Own Terms

What changes when you stop chasing VC milestones and start building for the life you actually want.

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Feb 20, 2026 Growth

How Internal Champions Helped Me Grow EventCatalog and Why They're Worth More Than Any Marketing Campaign

How Internal Champions Helped Me Grow EventCatalog and Why They're Worth More Than Any Marketing Campaign

The people already using your product are often your best salespeople -- if you treat them like more than just users.

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Feb 11, 2026 Mindset

How AI Made Scope Creep My Biggest Threat and Why Speed Is Not a Strategy

How AI Made Scope Creep My Biggest Threat and Why Speed Is Not a Strategy

AI makes building faster than ever. That's exactly why it's more important than ever to build less.

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Feb 8, 2026 Pricing

Why I Undercharged for EventCatalog and What I Learned About How Developers Get Pricing Wrong

Why I Undercharged for EventCatalog and What I Learned About How Developers Get Pricing Wrong

Why developers are wired to undersell their products and how to start pricing based on the problem you solve, not the code you wrote.

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Feb 8, 2026 Growth

Why I Spent All My Time Chasing New Customers and What I Learned When Renewals Hit

Why I Spent All My Time Chasing New Customers and What I Learned When Renewals Hit

What happens when you focus all your energy on acquisition and forget the people already paying you.

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Feb 8, 2026 The Journey

How AI Gave Me the Capacity of a Small Team and Why That Changes Everything for Solo Founders

How AI Gave Me the Capacity of a Small Team and Why That Changes Everything for Solo Founders

The bottleneck used to be building. Now it's deciding what to build. Here's how AI shifted what's possible when you're bootstrapping alone.

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Feb 8, 2026 Mindset

I Got to $23K MRR Without Stripe and What That Taught Me About Starting Simple

I Got to $23K MRR Without Stripe and What That Taught Me About Starting Simple

You don't need half the infrastructure you think you need. Here's what actually matters when you're building something from zero.

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Feb 8, 2026 The Journey

I Confused Shipping Speed With Product Speed

I Confused Shipping Speed With Product Speed

Shipping fast doesn't mean shipping smart. Here's what I learned about finding the right release cadence when your users have jobs and limited bandwidth.

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Feb 6, 2026 Growth

How I Turned Content Into a Growth Engine and Why It Works Better Than Ads

How I Turned Content Into a Growth Engine and Why It Works Better Than Ads

Why developer advocacy and problem-space thinking created a compounding growth flywheel for me

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Feb 6, 2026 The Journey

My First Sale and What I Learned About Turning Free Users Into Paying Customers

My First Sale and What I Learned About Turning Free Users Into Paying Customers

How I went from free open source project to someone actually paying me for it.

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Feb 6, 2026 The Journey

Why I Quit My Job to Build EventCatalog and What I Learned About Taking the Leap

Why I Quit My Job to Build EventCatalog and What I Learned About Taking the Leap

What it really looks like to leave your job and go all-in on an open source project.

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Building in public isn't about showing off wins. It's about documenting the messy middle so others don't have to figure it out alone.
David Boyne
David Boyne
Solo founder, EventCatalog
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