Bootstrap 101
from Young Entrepreneur.com, enhanced by Peter/CXO Wiz4.biz 1/13
Everyday, around the world, millions of entre-preneurs decide to go for it — even though they don’t have financial backers. If you can’t find funding for your business, or if you’d rather go it alone, and build your company from the ground up the hard way (sounds crazy again, but most Entrepreneurs do – 97%) then you’re going to have to learn to bootstrap!
What Is Bootstrapping & Why it’s good? It’s the process of building a business from the ground up, with no outside funding. When you first start dreaming of becoming an entrepre-neur, chances are you are imagining hordes of financiers battering down your door to offer you money (<3%). That's unlikely to happen, but even if it did, it would not come without a price. When you accept funding, whether it's from an angel investor, a venture capital firm or a traditional bank, they're going to want to have some say on how things are done. That means less autonomy for you - the entrepre-neur - to build the business you've been dreaming about. With all that money at your disposal, you're also unlikely to ever learn the true innovation, invention & budgeting that a real entrepreneur needs to understand in order to keep a business going when times are tough. Make no mistake, it's a fact of life, and of business, that sometime, things will go bad. If you bootstrapped your business into being, rather than accepting funding from the outset, you will already have the skills to navigate tough times, and come out a winner! Bootstrapping Impresses Investors. All ideals & romanticism aside, however, chances are, at some point, your business will need funding. If you, the entrepreneur, can stand in front of potential investors, and show them exactly how you built your business from the ground up, with no outside aid, you’re far more likely to impress them, than if you’d simply used other people’s money to create your company. Going to a group of potential investors – having bootstrapped your business into success – only proves to them that you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur, and that you can do the same with their money. Nothing is more likely to make them take a risk than that! And now . . .
How to Bootstrap your Startup
– Start Small, and work your way up. Choose manageable first goals, and achieve them. Then use those profits to fund the next, bigger goal, and so on, until you reach the original Vision of your Startup.
– Cut Costs. Find simpler/cheaper ways to do every thing: No Office till you cant work in your garage / dining room table, leasing equip-ment, give equity vs salary. Bottom line? You may have to cut out a bit of your personal ex-travagants / luxuries. Do it !!!
– Get Creative. Bootstrapping successfully requires you to find creative ways to make the money you need to start your business. Sell something; offer a separate service on the side to make extra money, freelance for a while in parallel to your business, or pawn something if you have to. When entrepreneurs bootstrap, anything goes!
– Persistence is Everything – when it comes to bootstrapping, it’s not easy. Often it’s tough. But if you keep at it, there’s no chance you will make something of it.
Famous Bootstrappers There have been plenty of people out there who have made their fortunes using Bootstrap strategy. Steve Jobs & Woz started on a shoe-string, Bill Gates started Microsoft with very little money, and of course, the boys at Google. In fact, some of the world’s best known brands, and most success-ful companies, were founded with little more than a good idea, and the will to succeed. All the more proof that you don’t need lots of money to be an entrepreneur — you just have to be willing to take that Boot Step, Boot Strap into the unknown.
Comments: What do you think of Boot-Strapping? How has it helped you?