So what does all this tipping point stuff mean when it comes to choosing your startup product or service?

After all, while marketer Seth Godin suggests you make you product remarkable, something as unremarkable as a fifty year old line of casual shoes may wind up being the next big thing.

Here are a couple of ideas to help you navigate through these seemingly contradictory ideas when looking for the kind of bootstrap business you should start:

• Look for what people are already buying. Godin adds that this will probably be at the edges of culture, not in the mainstream. (More on this in the last point.) If there's nothing that really fits this description look to fill a need.
• Always listen to your customers. When taking the first or second approach mentioned above, you'll have to be sure in both cases that you keep your finger on the pulse of your customer base. Greg Gianforte kept asking his customers for feedback as he bootstrapped RightNow Technologies.
• Don't screw with success. It would have been a bad idea for Wolverine, the company that makes Hush Puppies, to freak out when they saw trendy kids wearing their shoes thinking they were meant for casual instead of hip wear. (See Guy Kawasaki's thoughts on who really takes care of product positioning in his post "The Top Ten Lies of Marketers".)
• Look for the wave that hasn't yet crested. As mentioned above, don't bother with a product that's already reached the mainstream. Look for something with room to grow.

I've made a few of my own mistakes along these lines and the process is definitely not cut and dry. Share your own experiences with bootstrapping through viral marketing in the comment section or at our MySpace and Yahoo! groups.

Photo Credit: www.sethgodin.com

I got around to reading The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell's book on the spread of ideas a bit later than most people, but cracked it this weekend and plan to post some commentary as I work my way through.

The book is particularly significant to bootstrappers because of its implications for viral marketing without big advertising budgets or access to huge distribution hubs.

Gladwell begins his analysis simply enough with the seemingly inexplicable rise of Hush Puppies in the mid-1990's from has been to high fashion due to the efforts of a couple of kids in Soho and Greenwich Village who began wearing the shoes to clubs and bars in downtown Manhattan.

Gladwell writes:

Those first few kids, whoever they were, weren't deliberately trying to promote Hush Puppies. They were wearing them precisely because no one else would wear them. Then the fad spread to two fashion designers who used the shoes to peddle something else-haute couture. The shoes were an incidental touch. No one was trying to make Hush Puppies a trend. Yet, somehow, that's exactly what happened. The shoes passed a certain point in popularity and they tipped. How does a thirty dollar pair of shoes go from a handful of downtown Manhattan hipsters and designers to every mall in America in the space of two years?

The answer, Gladwell, argues, is a variation on contagion theory where an idea, like a virus or other infectious microbe, spreads geometrically through a population starting with a very small group of people.

Gladwell's observations demonstrate clearly that:
• Originators often haven't a clue. In this case the popularity of Hush Puppies occurred without any effort and to the complete surprise of the company that manufactured the product and was considering discontinuing it due to low sales
• The spread may be unintentional. Those who first promoted the foot wear were not professional marketers and were not trying to promote a resurgence in the shoes' sales.
• The idea itself may be incidental. An argument that may contradict marketing guru Seth Godin's Purple Cow idea about choosing a remarkable product. (More on this in a later post.)

In the end, Gladwell writes that a better understanding of how ideas spread unintentionally may help us learn how to generate positive contagions of our own.

A post at the Global Security Challenge suggests these three alternatives to bootstrapping your new or existing business drawn in turn from an article in the Wall Street Journal:
• On line social lending networks. The post calls this a "credit-union matchmaker" and in this case the example given is Zopa.com. Read this for more details about how the site works
• A credit line on inventory and accounts receivable. A pretty standard way in which to turn value in your existing business into financing for growth, it is less of an option for startups than for operating businesses.
• Government funding from economic development groups. This is especially an option if your startup or existing business will create lots of jobs when it starts or increases in size.

I'm not sure I'd really call these alternatives to bootstrapping, however.

In the first example, the rate remains lower than a credit card, the method used by entrepreneurs like the founders of One Greek Store.

And nothing here will risk you loosing your home or control of your company as you might with a conventional bank loan or Venture Capital financing.

Some business cannot be started and many cannot be expanded without some kind of investment. The key for the bootstrapper is to finance a startup or expansion creatively without huge borrowing or capital reserves.

Photo Credit: Jane M Sawyer, MorgueFile

I've been making a list of the kinds of music that, as an amateur musician, I could probably create with minimal or no help, at least in a kind of unplugged format.

So far I've come up with blues, traditional country, jazz (some styles), traditional rock 'n roll and R&B, traditional rock/pop, avant-garde, indie music, samples for electronic music and maybe Reggae.

(This last one I've got at least a love for which could probably go a long way toward developing the ability to play/create it.)

The idea of all this is an exercise to determine what might be involved in bootstrapping and running a new independent record label with the free tools made available by the Internet and without any outside help...at least at first.

This is almost the exact opposite of something I attempted earlier with a digital music community called IndieTune which failed to generate much interest.

Such an operation would require the bootstrapper to wear many hats on the creative, technical and marketing fronts similar to late Christian rock pioneer Larry Norman's description in this clip from Eden Z Films of fellow Christian artists and producers Gene "Eugene" Andrusco, Mark Heard and Terry Scott Taylor.



Steps would include:
• Uploading original tracks to sites like Musicane for downloaded sale and to sites like iJigg for promotion.
• Creating accounts on social network sites like MySpace, MyBlogLog, Facebook etc. to attract traffic and make the on line community aware of your product
• Looking into the sale of additional related products like T-shirts, videos or CD's via print on demand sources like CafePress.com.
• Looking at the possibility of promoting concerts digitally via MeetUp or some other similar social tool.
• Creating a blog/blogs for your music, perhaps one for each genre, to keep a growing customer base apprised of what you are doing next and to keep drawing attention to the label and its brand.

Got any ideas to add? Comment below or at our Yahoo! or MySpace groups.

Photo Credits: Jacob Leistner, MorgueFile

Gavin Bowman, director of V4 Solutions e-mails:

Hi Shawn,

Just read your post asking for suggestions for links relating to bootstrapping/entrepreneurship.

I run a weekly newsletter post on my blog for a small community of independent software developers, and the linked contents tend to have that entrepreneur/bootstrapper vibe.

If you think it might be of interest to your readers, the blog link is:-

http://webhelperbrowser.com/blog

Look for any of the 100 or so Micro ISV Digest posts.

If you think the content is a bit specialized, no worries, keep up the good work.

Cheers,

Though I know next to nothing about software development, I've decided to take Saurabh Chandra's advice about "How to become the right person" in order to bootstrap an idea called PostRanger.com to reality.

Whether that will mean learning programming myself or finding a partner or reasonable subcontractor to build the platform while I continue to focus on content, my personal forte, you can bet I'll be spending time on your site in the near future, Gavin.

If you've got a great idea that won't go away, don't chuck it just because you don't have all the appropriate talents. Instead:

• Focus on learning. Educate yourself as much as possible. Bootstrapping means you won't have the security of a big bankroll to buy the expertise you need and maybe that's for the best. Having two much money could be dangerous if you know too little about your business and trust experts for hire who are working for the payoff not for you.
• Get yourself connected. Surround yourself with good people committed to your dream and willing to take a share of its possible future. Good managers and entrepreneurs have always known it doesn't require expertise in every facet of your business to succeed so long as you know enough to guide the people who do.
• Focus on core competencies. Just because you'll be learning a lot of new skills, doesn't mean you should abandon the talents you already bring to the table. Regardless of how much I learn about programming in the effort to build PostRanger.com, I know that creating content remains my strong suite and it is where I will continue to concentrate my energies.

Photo Credit: Jane M Sawyer, MorgueFile

You don't need to wait until the time is right to launch your bootstrap venture.

In fact, as entrepreneur Greg Gianforte has pointed out, one of the best things about bootstrapping is that you can start right away.

O.K. maybe the first couple of steps aren't the most glamorous, certainly nothing like the launch party of a big venture capital company.

But plenty of tools already exist out there to start your little unobtrusive company right now and let it grow for the future.

To test this theory out, I decided to jump start an idea for the ultimate content/social network called PostRanger.com with a couple of simple on line tools.

Here's how I went about it:
• I've got no software programming experience so I decided to stick to what I know (content)
• I used an existing tool (Squidoo) with established revenue potential to launch a couple of simple sites
• One site, The Coal Country Chronicle, takes advantage of my knowledge of the Pennsylvania Anthracite region after working a decade at a daily newspaper in the area
• Another site, Tamaqua Gateway Gazette, provides resources on a small town in northeastern Pennsylvania where I still own a house and which I have gained a knowledge of simply after spending about nine years living there.
• A third, Ocean City Fever, will provide resources on my favorite Maryland getaway

No these sites alone won't make me millions overnight, but here is what, in my view, they do provide:
• Revenue to be used for furthering my broader agenda of either partnering with a software entrepreneur or hiring a contractor to build PostRanger.com myself
• Experience and on line visibility as a content provider working in the field where I expect to build my business
• Interaction with others (entrepreneurs, software designers and other content providers) who may be future partners, costumers, suppliers for a growing venture in the future.

Be sure to check out the new sites. Your input is greatly appreciated.

Photo Credit: Stuart Whitmore, MorgueFile