Announcing my tiny bootstrapped fund (and first acquisition)

Do not index
Do not index
As you probably know, I’ve been spinning up profitable SaaS for years with no team, no money, no investments of any kind. Almost all of my SaaS are making money – not huge $$$, but definitely some $.
Today, I’m announcing my alternative, bootstrapped fund.

Investment thesis

  • we only invest in products that are not yet executed (little or no revenue is totally fine)
  • we only invest in products we can improve fast
  • we only invest in products we can cross-sell within our portfolio
  • we only invest in products that have to do with data collection
  • we only invest in bootstrapped products
  • we always retain 100% equity (full buyouts)
Expectations: I’m a starter, not a grower. I usually go from $0 to a maximum of $10k in MRR per single product.

What do we invest?

We usually buy the products for money, usually in the low 4 figures range. The money is trivial, though. The biggest investment is our resources: our experience, our process, our speed, our time, etc.

Our first acquisition

We recently acquired a Telegram bot, called Coronavirus bot. At the time of the acquisition, over 600k people have used it to stay informed about the pandemic. Now that the pandemic is almost over (?) a few new users are using it every day, but I saw an opportunity in re-engaging people using data from Treendly, our trend-spotting platform.
Specifically, on the Treendly blog, we have been covering trends on second and third-order consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I think that content is still very relevant.
The purpose would be to have people who used the Telegram bot to interact with this new type of content, and hopefully make a free account on Treendly.
The transaction with the previous owner of the bot was smooth, and the transfer of ownership has already been completed. It was a full buyout for low 4-figures.

Want to invest?

Well, you can’t. You can’t invest money, as I want to keep this fund boostrapped.
That being said, there are other ways you can “invest” in our fund:1 – If you have a proven skill, you can “invest” your skills and time in our portfolio of products (a.k.a. we are hiring)
2 – If you have a successful course or podcast that you’d like to monetize, we might partner.
3 – If you have something you’d like to sell, we might want to hear from you.
If that’s the case, you can contact me here: [email protected]
We already have plenty of ideas we are thinking of building, but I also hold regular brainstorming sessions, if you are interested.

Follow the journey

Not interested in selling or investing in the fund? No problem!
You can go to our Brain platform to follow our journey. Or, subscribe to our newsletter below.
Thanks for reading,
Mike
Mike Rubini

Written by

Mike Rubini

CEO