Holy Crap! Even my boss is bootstrapping!

Filed in archive Entrepreneurship on September 21, 2007

I wasn't quite prepared for this last week when I walked into the office and discovered the media outlet I work for is expanding into video on the web with sweat equity put in by the photo staff and a website called blip.tv.

In the same family as Revver, another similar site, blip.tv takes YouTube to the next level for entrepreneurs by giving you a cut of revenue earned from ads placed on your uploaded material...and it's free!

Here are some great reasons a traditional company might want to try the bootstrap business approach even if bootstrapping is not in the corporation's "DNA" as Bijoy Goswami puts it:

1. Test the viability of a venture before investing more money. I say this knowing instinctively that a traditional company will inevitably reach the conclusion that the only way to make any "real money" is to invest more resources. A working bootstrapped model is at least more to go on than a profit projection made without even creating the new product. (Now, who would do something like that?!)

2. Give employees a chance to take the lead and take ownership. Especially young energetic employees which a traditional company can easily spare since it hires way to many people anyway. They also have the gear and the gizmos to come up with the next big thing without much help.

3. Develop innovations beyond the confines of the industry. Necessity is the mother of invention so being unable or unwilling to just buy the service or product out of the box like everyone else, will force you to find new more inexpensive ways to develop an alternative.

4. Develop expertise in a unique product of your own creation. Keep ordering the same products from the same outside vendor as all of your competitors and there's no way to distinguish your brand. Create a stand-alone product out of bootstrapping innovation and you've got something you can easily market as your own.