Bootstrapping aids photo sharing network

Filed in archive Bootstrapper Resources on July 22, 2007

In the first of a series of entrepreneurs' stories at the Kauffman Foundation's great bootstrapping resource page, Alex Welch, co-founder of Photobucket, talks about starting his company with a variety of funding means and efforts to save costs.

Welch used everything from savings, credit cards and home mortgages to a fortuitous partnership with his former boss, wheeling and dealing for equipment and a loan from a sympathetic banker to launch his company and push it to profitability.

The online social network for sharing photos and other visual digital media now boasts an estimated 46 million users and growing, but Welch claims it was started on a bunch of servers in his partner's basement.

He says waiting for bigger funding until bootstrapping the company to profitability improved the terms for the original business owners when that funding finally came.

"Besides, when you bootstrap from the beginning and ingrain it in your corporate culture, bootstrapping becomes a state of mind. You never stop treating every dollar like your last," Welch explains.