I launched a job board for bootstrapped startups today — here's what the first day looked like
Who I am
I'm a full-stack developer who's been building side projects for a while,
but always as a hobby. This week I decided to take it seriously — shipping
real products, building in public, and documenting the journey honestly.
RamenHire is my first serious attempt.
The idea
A friend got laid off from his third "high-growth" startup in four years.
Great engineer. Terrible luck with employers chasing runway instead of revenue.
That conversation stuck with me. Because there ARE great companies out there
— Basecamp, Plausible, Transistor, Payhip — calm, profitable, founder-run
businesses that have been growing steadily for years without ever taking a
cent of VC money. Places where people actually stay for years.
But there's nowhere to find jobs at them specifically. LinkedIn and Indeed
are flooded with VC-backed startups. So I built RamenHire 🍜 — a job board
exclusively for bootstrapped, self-funded startups.
What I actually shipped today
This wasn't just a landing page day. Here's what went live:
Validation → real product: Started with a static landing page and Google
Forms. By end of day, replaced everything with internal Supabase-backed forms,
a CV upload system using Supabase Storage, and a proper Post a Job page at /post-job.
CV upload with Supabase Storage: Users can now drag and drop their CV
directly in the apply modal. Files go to a private Supabase Storage bucket —
no public URLs, admin-only access. Took longer than expected because of RLS
policy gotchas (more on that below).
Admin email notifications with Resend: Every new job post request,
application, and subscriber now triggers an instant email to me with all
the details. No more manually checking Supabase tables. Resend was incredibly
easy to set up — had it working in under an hour.
Local Docker development environment: Set up Supabase CLI with Docker
for local development. Production DB stays untouched until changes are stable
and explicitly pushed. Should have done this from day one.
Analytics and SEO: Google Analytics 4, Google Search Console, sitemap,
robots.txt, Open Graph tags, and JobPosting schema markup for rich results.
What I actually learned today
Supabase RLS with Storage is not the same as RLS on tables.
I spent an embarrassing amount of time getting a 400 error on CV uploads.
The policies were correctly set in the UI but uploads kept failing. Turns out
Storage RLS policies need to target storage.objects directly via SQL —
the UI policies weren't applying correctly. Once I ran the SQL directly
in the editor, it worked immediately.
Validate the idea before writing a single line of real code.
I launched a static landing page first — no backend, no auth, just a headline
and two Google Form links. Only after seeing real signups from 6 different
countries did I invest in building the real product. This saved me weeks of
building something nobody wanted.
DNS propagation is always slower than you expect 😅
Spent way too long staring at "Pending" status on Resend's domain verification.
It eventually resolved itself. Lesson: set it up and go do something else.
Claude Code is a genuine force multiplier.
100% of this was built with Claude Code. Not vibe coding — I reviewed every
decision, understood every line, and caught several issues before they hit
production. But the speed difference is real. What would have taken me a week
of evenings took one focused day.
What's next
- Admin dashboard — approve/reject job posts without logging into Supabase
- Move hardcoded job listings to database-driven
- Stripe integration once validated
- Blog section for SEO content
The honest numbers
- 33 users in the first few days from 6 countries (US, Germany, Israel, Canada, UK, South Korea)
- 0 paying customers
- 0 real job listings yet — still hardcoded
- Built in roughly one week of evenings and one full day
I'd love to hear from you
- Would you use a job board specifically for bootstrapped companies?
- If you run a bootstrapped startup and are hiring — would you post there?
- What would make this more useful for you?
All job posts are free during early access.
Top comments (2)
This feels like the right order of operations: prove a pulse with a static page and Google Forms, then earn the Supabase forms, private CV uploads, and Resend notifications once 33 users from 6 countries showed up. The Storage RLS detail is also a useful reminder that "managed backend" still has sharp edges when file access becomes part of the trust model. For a job board like this, I'd treat curation as the core product: approving bootstrapped companies carefully may matter more than adding Stripe or a bigger dashboard too early.
congrats on shipping, and "jobs at profitable companies" is a genuinely good wedge. people search for that and can't find it on LinkedIn/Indeed.
to answer your question directly (what would make it more useful): real listings. you flagged it yourself, "0 real job listings, still hardcoded", and for a job board that's the whole ballgame. i'd spend this week curating 30-50 actual current openings by hand from the bootstrapped world you named (Basecamp, Plausible, Transistor, the MicroConf / indie hackers crowd). a board of real jobs at companies people admire is what makes a seeker come back, and what makes a company pay to sit next to them once you flip on pricing. aggregate first, charge later. and MicroConf, IH and r/SaaS are where both the hiring companies and the candidates already hang out, so that's your distribution for both sides at once.