Article · About a 7 minute read

How we avoid building the wrong product as a bootstrap startup

Clement Bataille · Medium Free Beginner

Every one-off custom feature you say yes to is margin you spend building something one customer wants and everyone else pays to maintain, and this is a working bootstrapped founder writing about how he actually decides. His rule is refreshingly blunt: if only one customer is asking, it is an edge case, and saying yes quietly turns a product company into an underpaid services shop. It is a practical starting point for building a filter, not a script to copy word for word.

• If a single customer is the only one asking, treat it as an edge case and default to no, not yes.
• Only entertain a custom build when the customer commits (for example a year) and the feature genuinely fits your product direction.
• Limited resources are a feature: constraints force you to build only what serves the whole roadmap, which is what protects your margins.