The downsides are still there it takes the same level of commitment, dedication, and obsessive effort to bootstrap.

It has taken me 5 years to bootstrap a niche b2b saas to $1m ARR. It is both awesome and terrible.

It doesn't have to be stressful or full-commitment. I'm cool with $50k ARR.

I'm not even sure revenue is that good of a signal of the work put in. Didn't the Basecamp guys start off on just 10 hours a week inbetween their day job.

By day job do you mean running 37signals the new media design firm at the dawn of the web?

I wouldn’t really isolate the “day job” part here, it was sort of the quintessential dogfood SaaS.

That's an amazing achievement to have reached that milestone!