Mike Taber

Mike Taber is a self-funded software entrepreneur from Massachusetts and one of the best-known advocates for founders who build alone. He held several corporate software development jobs and did consulting before turning to his own products.

With Rob Walling he co-founded MicroConf in 2011, the conference and community for bootstrapped and self-funded SaaS founders. He also co-hosted the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast with Rob for its first 448 episodes. In mid-2019, burned out and struggling to push his product past ramen profitability, he stepped back from the show to focus on his health and on Bluetick. He returned as a guest for regular updates.

Bluetick, announced in early 2017, automates warm and cold email follow-ups and stops the sequence when a recipient replies. For years it barely covered costs, and Mike was funding it from savings. A late-2021 decision to double down, plus a pivot from individual users paying $50 to $100 a month toward agencies, turned it around. By March 2023 he reported five-figure monthly recurring revenue, a salary and a fairly profitable business. He had earlier built AuditShark, a security auditing product, and sold its domain in 2022.

Mike wrote The Single Founder Handbook, launched in May 2015, and the Single Founder blog about building a company on your own. He also runs FounderCafe, an online community for self-funded entrepreneurs.