By Martin Zwilling
If you really want to start a business your way without a boss or professional investor hovering over you, then just fund it yourself or through friends and family, and grow it organically. It’s more possible to bootstrap today than a few years ago, as the cost of entry continues to go down. According to Investopedia, over 90 percent of successful businesses currently start this way.
With one of the new free tools and a dose of sweat equity, you can create a website for almost nothing — and you are on your way to success with ecommerce, your latest invention or personal services. It’s equally easy to go online and incorporate your new entity, register some intellectual property and have some fun with social media for marketing and interacting with customers.
The key to successful bootstrapping is to master the do-it-yourself approach, defer compensation or barter services whenever possible and become a frugal minimalist in all things requiring a cash outlay. Here are the key principles I recommend as an advisor to many entrepreneurs:
- Start your business in your own home. With the advent of the Internet, the size and address of your office is irrelevant. Most new teams are geographically dispersed these days anyway, so paying rent for an office should be differed to later stages when revenue is plentiful. You will be in good company with the many legends who used this approach.
- Barter services for access to required resources. Don’t rationalize a big investment in basic equipment with long-term requirements thinking. Look for a part-time job in a local or family business to provide access to things you will need only occasionally, such as a high-speed printer, video equipment or product assembly tools and storage.
- Learn to be a generalist rather than a specialist. With the unlimited access to “how-to” videos and detailed instructions on the Internet, you shouldn’t need to hire experts for most things. Likewise, too many volunteers and interns will only increase your workload and rework costs. Use your networking to get advice, but all jobs can be do-it-yourself.
- Operate small, but show a big-company image. You don’t need a large building and staff to be visible and heard worldwide. Use multiple social-media channels, blogging, email and voicemail to build the same image and responsiveness as larger competitors. Keep expenses down, but keep customer visibility and sensitivity as a top priority.
- Practice living on a shoestring budget. Most successful entrepreneurs take only a very minimum salary during the formative business years and reinvest all profits back into the business for organic growth. Defer your desire for expensive perks and vacations until later when you have time for them. You can have fun without spending big money.
- Favor profitability over revenue and user growth. Adding free users or customers to increase valuation makes sense for a venture-backed startup looking to go public, but will kill bootstrapping. Self-sustainability, independence, and real fun requires paying customers, profitability and an early cash-flow-positive business plan.
- Use your equity for key executives and business partners. Bootstrapping doesn’t mean that you don’t share equity. You can use it best to entice new team members and partners, giving you more horsepower and commitment for the long run. Investors seeking equity for cash typically want more control and cash-return quickly.
- Don’t assume you must plan for exponential growth. Investors have spread the word that you can’t get “hockey-stick” growth without a large cash infusion. In fact, you don’t need exponential growth to give you a good return and be declared successful. You may not be acquired for 10-times revenue, but quick exits and public offerings are no fun.
In summary, bootstrapping means living within your means, watching costs carefully, finding alternatives to cash for building the team and expanding the business infrastructure. Bootstrapping does require a full confidence in your own passion to make decisions and change the world with no investors to lean on or blame. But isn’t that why you signed up to be an entrepreneur in the first place?
