From open source side project to bootstrapped solo business | David Boyne @EventCatalog

saas.unbound is a podcast for and about founders who are working on scaling inspiring products that people love, brought to you by https://saas.group/, a serial acquirer of B2B SaaS companies.

In episode #15 of season 6, Anna Nadeina talks with David Boyne, founder of EventCatalog, an open-source documentation tool specifically designed for event-driven architectures (EDAs), allowing teams to document, visualize, and discover services, events, schemas, and producers/consumers.

Dave Boyne left a senior AWS developer advocate role — the highest salary he'd ever earned — and jumped into bootstrapping with 12 months of runway, a self-hosted documentation tool, and no clear business model. Fourteen months later, Event Catalog has crossed $300K in revenue, and Dave reached personal sustainability in just 8 months.

In this episode:

→ Why Dave chose a self-hosted license key model over SaaS — and why it made procurement 10x easier

→ How he reached sustainability in 8 months without raising a single dollar

→ His AI-powered content and coding workflows as a solo founder

→ The post-sale mistake he almost didn't catch: ignoring renewals while chasing new sales

→ Why he raised prices twice — and the 20% drop-off rule he uses to know when pricing is right

→ How he uses LinkedIn to build trust with developers without ever leading with the product

----------- Episode's Chapters -----------

0:00 — Introduction & Guest Background

1:55 — From AWS to Bootstrapping

5:00 — Marketing on LinkedIn

7:25 — What is Event Catalog?

9:39 — Business Model: Open Core Over SaaS

14:23 — Building with AI as a Solo Founder

38:08 — Biggest Win & Biggest Failure

41:46 — Founder Hacks & Closing Thoughts

This one's for solo founders and technical builders who want to see what the zero-to-$300K journey actually looks like.

David - https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-boyne/

EventCatalog - https://www.eventcatalog.dev/