A while back (over a year), I had a reasonably open discussion about it here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=423249

I'm not afraid to discuss just about any internal operation I do with my business, I just don't have a blog yet. I started one a while back, but never really updated it.

You can add us (Talldude Networks) as a successful (almost 8 years) "startup", completely self funded and roaring along.

There are, of course, many others way to do that, than blogging. But the level of needed transparency is roughly the same.

To get the most value out of business partners, you generally have to put us into a position, where educated guesses can be made about which lever might give you the best ROI, and what you shouldn't pull too much.

You don't need detailed revenue figures to make this happen. But, you are in _business_. Your most important enabler is money. Business discussions relevance to business will be correlating with it's proximate to money.

I think one of the biggest concerns small companies have is that divulging their monthly income can give their competition insights into their revenue stream and customer count - something that I know makes me a bit uneasy. But maybe there's a way to be more open/transparent without divulging "too much" information - and maybe there is a benefit in that to your customers?

I can see a company that provides mockups or time management tools being able to hide this info (it's not intended to be publically consumed), but in our case it's difficult.

I guess creating a sense of complacency in the competition is a good thing. They might be more worried if they were watching huge growth in a competitor, but if the underdog is coming up with big growth anyway, there isn't much the market leader can do to prevent it...

If your ideology involves the encouragement of more small biz, it's a way to further your mission.

And if you do like both of those things, but don't think your customers need to know, then blog about it elsewhere. Most won't bother to search for it :)

The startup is http://www.ratemystudentrental.com, which licenses private-label subscriptions to universities. I also have a consultancy that builds web-based software, and that consultancy has a new SAAS app (http://www.leadnuke.com, which actually started as a solution for a problem my startup was experiencing).

I haven't blogged a ton about the internals of business specifically, because I find it somewhat dry (which means I rarely motivate myself to write about it). I do blog about life and the emotional roller-coaster that I've experienced in being an entrepreneur, though.

Blog about technical stuff (and sometimes entrepreneurship): http://www.alfajango.com/blog

Blog about entrepreneurship, life, and whatever else: http://jangosteve.com

For me its kind of like boiling a frog. I get all kinds of queasy about telling people what my salary was (I was raised such that one just did not do that), but back when I was making all of $24.95 in sales a month well pfft no harm in saying that... and then all you have to do is "not stop".

Amusing cultural note: Japan is almost totally open about salaries. I didn't know what my father's approximate salary was until I was in my twenties. I don't know what my friends make now. Here, I've been asked it on second dates before, and the local sushi guy knew it without me even telling him. ("Well, duh: engineer in Nagoya + I know your age. What else could your salary be?!" And he's right.)

http://spencerfry.com/how-to-bootstrap

And then why you shouldn't be transparent:

http://spencerfry.com/disclosing-your-finances

But if you're looking to bootstrap a startup into a sustainable enterprise that "solves the money problem" (as Paul puts it), there are plenty of fabulous examples with $2million, $10mil, $50mil in revenue. Study them.

While I'd like to blog about the internals and experience, we sell mostly in the B2B large corporation space, and our small size is our largest pain point during the sales cycle. I think an open blog about our internal business growth would make things worse for us, not better.

Product: http://serverdensity.com

Blog: http://blog.boxedice.com/

If I was to bootstrap something again then I would do it in my free time until it took off (like patio11). If you have any questions feel free to ask :-)

For numbers: Todoist has 100.000+ users and only a few % paying customers - enough to cover costs and make it profitable.

great stuff amix.

http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?biz

http://blog.iteleportmobile.com/

Our latest post details some revenue numbers:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1329108

We're going to try to keep posting actively...

We are working on becoming more transparent with our business, as there is decent appetite for any information in regards to the bootstrapping process. I think I just got motivated enough to write a decent blog post this evening.

An older story was Bob Parson's development of his tax software company, which was acquired by Intuit for 64 million. He's quite transparent about it, to say the least.

http://www.twobitoperation.com/ menuism, the wedding lens, pickfu

Our blog is kinda sparse now but I'm fairly open on HN. :) And I'll be writing more about business specifically at http://unicornfree.com/.

EDIT: Totally bootstrapped, launched Dec 2008. There are 4 of us, but I'm the owner. We have a profit-sharing agreement with our partners.

"... The discussion always seems to revolve around funding, or getting acquired, and retiring.

Or growth. Or hiring. Or tech tricks. Or it’s about affiliates and IM products, and getting rich off teaching people’s parrots to talk.

Or it’s about hyper-optimization, and split-testing which way you should orient the toilet paper roll. (The answer is over, not under, by the way.)

Or everyone in the group agrees that they are working on the next big breakthrough, when really they’re just building a social network for dogs.

..."

I feel your pain -I'm also reading HN. Looking forward seeing your take.

Bookmarked both the blog and the service!