developing: the slow burn

A few weeks ago, I applied to Y Combinator, the startup accelerator notable for producing giants like Instacart, AirBnB, and Stripe (and many more!). To be frank, it’s highly unlikely that swishbook gets accepted to their Spring 2025 batch. I’m a solo founder that hasn’t yet found product-market fit in a market that realistically has an upper bound of ~700MM ARR (and I’d consider capturing 1% of that market to be a wild success). It’s overwhelmingly likely that swishbook continues as a nights-and-weekends project for the foreseeable future.

And that’s fine!

Although an influx of cash would give me the ability to focus on swishbook full time, the solo approach has benefits as well.

• I have near infinite runway. The cost of swishbook currently stands at ~$20/month for hosting and whatnot. Even if I never get a single customer, I’m not at risk of worrying about putting food on the table. Further, whether the project lives or dies is determined by my interest in keeping it going!

• I’m not beholden to investors. I don’t have to ingest AI into the product (I am a certified LLM hater). I don’t need to experience exponential growth to consider this project successful (though I certainly wouldn’t be opposed to it!).

• I can pivot to my heart’s desire. If I find that swishbook needs to take a (wildly) different direction to be successful, I can pivot! If I’m not interested in the new avenue, I can drop the project! The world is my oyster!

To be fair, everything above can still be somewhat true even in the presence of VC money. I can figure out how to extend the runway, push back on investor encroachment, or pivot the product if need be. It’s moreso that these decision points require more thought and craft when investors are involved. I’d definitely be happy were I accepted into YC’s batch! I’d just have another slate of items on swishbook’s radar that I’d need to dedicate time to.