How to make your business great
Bootstrap entrepreneurship is about more than just starting a business on a shoestring. It's about building a great company that functions in the real world beyond the theory of a business plan.
Here are some key points:
• Serve a need. A great business must focus on filling the desires and expectations of a customer base no matter how small that customer base may be. If there is, as Seth Godin puts it, no Otaku, no passionate group whose obsessions you fulfill, it's unlikely your business will survive.
• Make it real. Greg Gianforte suggests entrepreneurs who have received outside funding might spend lots of money before realizing their business is not really workable. Instead, bootstrappers get feedback early because they must initiate the selling phase from day one.
• Change the world. More than part of the title of Guy Kawasaki's famous blog, this is what building a great company and being an entrepreneur is all about. A great company will change the world by satisfying a need that has not yet been met.
• Focus on cash. Again from Guy Kawasaki, cash flow is the life blood of bootstrapped companies and great ones too. Who wants to be at the helm of a company mired in debt and always seeking money from investors or creditors instead of from customers.
• Build a brand. Make your company uniquely identifiable. This is not only the trait of a great company but again of a bootstrapped company too. Without much funding in the beginning for things like marketing your brand must be your message to the world. Make it a good one.
Any other sections? Share them in the comment section below or join our Yahoo! group and share some insights with our other members.
December 17th, 2007 at 9:02 pm
These are all great points and essential,but if the mezzanine complexity requirements of the business are beyond one individual’s monetary means, it can be very hard to bootstrap.
I may have to turn away from building the business of aggregated dispatch, to merely providing professional education on the subject – which may lead to a partnership.
Not every business (systems based) can be hiked up with 10k, grad students, and a basement office.
I’m losing my self esteem – I feel like Im letting my forebears down. They where immigrants who got off the boat at Ellis Island and Galveston, with something like 15$. And they made decent lives for themselves. Not the Levi’s fortune, mind you.
But some tech startups are not mercantile in nature. Some, as mine, are complex, and need a whack of expertise and time, and lubrication to get going. That mostly needs cash…but somehow…somehow, I dimply perceive that I might meet the right people to move this forward without needing large external investment.
I believe in the boostrap, I do, but it’s looking dark here as I sell of my stuff.
December 18th, 2007 at 3:12 am
Alan,
I think everyone who’s tried the bootstrap approach has met challenges and certainly some businesses are harder to bootstrap than others in a fully scaled form. But I think things like providng expertise and professional education can be a kind of bootstrapping if it leads to teaming with the right resources. A team of entrepreneurs with different skill sets can be key to bootstrapping projects. Don’t give up. I’m sure your forebears didn’t walk off the boat and found a successful department store chain the following day.
December 18th, 2007 at 10:53 am
I think I was venting a little there after a hard day. Your advice on this blog is actually very valuable and inspiring.
December 19th, 2007 at 3:56 am
Thanks, Alan. And thanks for the comments…venting included.