How to make your business great
Filed in archive Bootstrapper Tips by Shawn Hessinger on December 17, 2007
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.
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