Patrick McKenzie

Patrick McKenzie, known online as patio11, is one of the foundational writers of the bootstrapped software movement. While working as a salaryman at a Japanese company, he built Bingo Card Creator in 2006 as a nights-and-weekends side project — a small app that makes custom printable bingo cards for teachers. He used it as a public laboratory for SEO, A/B testing, conversion optimization and lifecycle email, publishing detailed year-in-review posts with real sales and expense numbers that inspired a generation of indie hackers.

He went full-time on his business, Kalzumeus Software, and in December 2010 launched Appointment Reminder, a SaaS that sends appointment reminder calls, texts and emails for professional services businesses. Alongside it he ran a high-end consulting practice and sold productized training on lifecycle email. In 2012 he reported total sales of about $275K and roughly $200K in profit, excluding Appointment Reminder. He sold Bingo Card Creator in 2015 and Appointment Reminder in 2016, after co-founding Starfighter, a programming-game recruiting startup that shut down.

In 2016 he joined Stripe to work on Stripe Atlas, the service that helps founders worldwide incorporate a US company, and spent six years there across marketing and communications; he remains an advisor. In 2021 he led VaccinateCA, the volunteer effort to help Californians find COVID-19 vaccines. Today he writes the newsletter Bits about Money on financial infrastructure and hosts the Complex Systems podcast, and his essays on salary negotiation and charging more remain perennial must-reads.