Kill the HiPPO
A newsletter helping small, bootstrapped software companies decide what feature to build next.
Kill the HiPPO by Steve McLeod & Siew Ann Tan now available on Amazon
How do successful bootstrapped founders decide what feature to build next?
As a bootstrapped founder, choosing the right features to build in your software product is one of the most important things you do—and it's really hard.
Sure, it starts out easy. But as your product grows, you find yourself building the wrong thing, struggling with technical debt, and getting mired in feature development that goes nowhere.
To find out how the founders we respect and admire deal with this problem, we selected 10 bootstrapped software companies—each of them stable, well-run, mature, and profitable—and asked their founders how they make critical product decisions.
Inside this book, you'll discover how bootstrapped founders:
- Decide which features are worth building
- Avoid getting stuck in endless development
- Balance essential work with innovative work
“If you’re a SaaS founder like me, this is a great frickin book!” - Rand Fishkin
About the authors
Steve McLeod is a three-time bootstrapped founder and CEO of Feature Upvote, a customer feedback platform.
Siew Ann Tan is a lawyer-turned-freelance B2B SaaS content writer who has written for clients like Semrush, Kit, and Feature Upvote.
Mentions of Kill the HiPPO around the web
Kill the HiPPO featured on produktbezogen.de, a German-language product management blog:
A lightning talk I gave at Business of Software Europe introduced the project and was based on the first half of the book.
- And your blog, podcast, or event next? Get in touch with me at steve@featureupvote.com.