Pat Walls from Starter Story: Interviewing Over 500 Businesses While Bootstrapping His Own
After a failed Y Combinator application in 2017, Pat Walls decided to bootstrap his next business. Hustling around his full-time job as a software developer, he built up Starter Story as a “solopreneur.”
Since inception in November 2017, Starter Story has interviewed over 500 businesses and is now averaging multiple interviews per day. He’s built out new features of the platform, including search functionality, suggested tools, founder-recommended books, and social engagement features. He’s even released an ebook showcasing the 24 most inspiring interviews.
The site mostly features e-commerce hits, although Pat has plans to expand past that. Products range from swim trunks made of trash to non-fiction book clubs to portable treehouses to miniature construction supplies to carbon fiber instruments, and these businesses do anywhere from a few thousand per month to up to millions per year.
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