BootStrapMe interviews Bijoy Goswami (Part 1)

Filed in archive Bootstrap Interviews on March 4, 2008

(Editor's Note: Bijoy Goswami is an entrepreneur's entrepreneur. After launching his own company Aviri with some outside investment in April 2000, Goswami turned his focus again to the bootstrapping approach for building businesses. He has evolved a very social view of bootstrapping entrepreneurship centered around the diverse talents of a "founding team". Along the way, Goswami has written a book The Human Fabric, helped launch the Bootstrap Network, a global on line community for startup entrepreneurs and released a DVD version of his Bootstrap Bootcamp to spread the word to others. He shares some of his observations with BootStrapMe.com readers in this on line interview on the Creative Weblogging network.)

SH: Since you've been out in front as an evangelist for the bootstrap approach to business startup, maybe we could begin with a concise definition of what exactly bootstrapping is from your point of view?

BG: Bootstrapping is the third way of entrepreneurship, distinguished from the cookie-cutter and funding-driven approaches. Actually, it's an integration of those two approaches and delivers highly adaptive, built-to-last companies. Bootstrapping can be described by a set of principles: right action right time, constraint creates innovation, demo/sell/build, dance with duality and use everything.

Here's a blog post on the third way: http://www.bootstrapaustin.org/2007/11/bootstrapping-third-way-of.html

SH: This is more than just theoretical in your own startup experience, I believe. I think I read somewhere that you started out with outside funding for your own company early on and then discovered there's a downside to that approach early in the game. Could you talk a bit more about that?

BG: I was always convinced about the bootstrapping approach, even though I did not understand it very well when I started my company. My study of bootstrapping started as a student at Stanford, where I studied the formation of companies, including HP, the founding company of Silicon Valley. Unfortunately, I was swayed away from my own intuition when I started my company in 2000 and took money from friends and family. It was a great way to see for myself just how unhelpful and distracting the introduction of investors too early was. My bootstrap evangelism began after that experience in 2003, resulting in the first Bootstrap Austin meeting in July, 2003.

(See the next installment of our interview with Bijoy Goswami in the next post of BootStrapMe.com)