7 Days and $500: One Man's Plan to Bootstrap A Startup In A Week | Hacker News Reader

7 Days and $500: One Man's Plan to Bootstrap A Startup In A Week

readwriteweb.com

30 pointsAndrewWarner38 comments

It's not a business until you hit that phase where you realize no one cares about the toy you built in a week's time. Then you pivot and put in a lot more effort than you ever bargained for - that's when you have a startup.

Indeed. He could have bought a domain, and a ready made website in an hour and launched it. That's light years away from being a business though.

It's not a business until you hit that phase where you realize no one cares about the toy you built in a week's time

You might think its a toy, and I might think its a toy, but if it solves a problem for a customer, then it is not a toy. Your lawyer doesn't need to labor a full week to write a letter worth hundreds. My dentist didn't need to drill for forty hours to charge me $770. There is nothing magical about computer programs which makes them worthless until an arbitrary amount of Red Bull cans have been consumed.

I wrote the first iteration of my software in eight days. People bought it. It has pretty much gone from there.

Does anyone remember when businesses started off trying to make money? This HN-fueled "startup" mania is getting ridiculous.. just because you have an idea and built some minimal prototype thing doesn't mean you're some brave entrepreneur.

Great point. I think 'entrepreneur' off late has become more of a sexy label to give oneself. It's funny how the term businessman(or woman) is never used, almost as if there's a dirty connotation to it. I think saying that I do business implicitly puts the expectation that there's cash flow.

I've been guilty of this thinking too, mostly influenced by such articles and the media fueled frenzy over "entrepreneurs" and their nice little website toy thingies built over weekends and in dark rooms. At best they're hobbies and fun projects.

==this comment is more of a reminder to self than a judgement of another==

It hadn't occurred to me before, but I refer to myself as a businessman in most contexts, and describe only my unproven activities as 'entrepreneurial'.

yeah, technically I'm a CEO...but I don't think I'll be comfortable wearing that tag unless the company starts making 10+ mil a year, which is like 5 years away.

So I just go by founder.

"10+ mil a year, which is like 5 years away"

Hockey stick hockey stick!

heh I know...here is hoping :)

I understand your sentiment but I think your criticism is a little off-base given this article concerns a startup that's charging for a service and appears to have the beginnings of a sales pipeline in place. No it's not going to be the next HyperMegaGlobal Corp but it's not an eyeballs-lead-to-profit "business" either.

Maybe it is our fault for assuming that "entrepreneur" is the same as "successful entrepreneur".

Thank you. Finally, a voice of sanity!

Most bootstrapped entrepreneurs don't get to blog about their progress "on the homepage of Australian entrepreneurship magazine Anthill." and they don't get a feature in RWW.

So to say..."all it takes is some will and dedication" is a little too much, when you are getting all that extra exposure.

He's launching in 7-days. A successful launch does not a successful startup make. I've had several successful launches myself. Still punching the clock at my day job, though.

It's fine and all, and best of luck to him, but I'm not sure that doing something for 7 days demonstrates much in the way of "dedication".

I think he also cheated by opening a bank account and incorporating. That's overkill at the stage he's at, but it gives the impression of "making progress", which surely impressed his readers.

I should know, I designed http://fairsoftware.net to prove that you don't need a corporation or even a bank account to build successful multi-founder software startups. And this guy is alone, so even less of a reason to waste money.

How would he takes payments without a bank account? http://fairsoftware.net gives me a 503 at the moment.

The way a virtual company works: customer -> virtualcompany host (fairsoftware in my example) -> personal account

This way, the end user has a business relationship with the virtual company host, shielding the entrepreneur, but the entrepreneur stills earns money as an independent contractor of the virtual company host. To me, the best of both worlds (but I'm biased). It beats opening a merchant account, that's for sure.

PS: no 503 for me...

"... I think he also cheated by opening a bank account and incorporating. That's overkill at the stage he's at ..."

I'd normally agree, but I think you have limited understanding of what is going on.

"... Working from his car, he was repeatedly frustrated by having to write down his mileages in a logbook, a logbook which would then be misplaced, lost and chewed by the dog. Logs would be jotted down on the back of receipts, discarded wrappers or scrap paper. Ultimately he wasn’t recording every business trip and he was therefore unable to claim the most he could come tax time.... it had wide appeal – 7 million Australians claim work related expenses each year on their tax returns. ..." ~ http://www.semi-blog.com/2010/01/startup-in-7-days-day-one-t...

The requirement is for tax deductions, to use the service probably numerous requirements under Australian law. Hence the licensing of business and bank account. I noticed the - "registered software provider" by the Australian Tax Office (ATO) so ~ http://ato.gov.au/ This isn't just a website but a system that hooks into the ATO Electronic Commerce interface (ECI) as a Business Activity Service (BAS) has statutory requirements: certificates, Australian Business Numbers (ABN) ~ http://ato.gov.au/onlineservices/content.asp?doc=/content/00...

Is it just me or does a week seem like a long time to do this? I mean obviously it's not really a business just a little web service, but really, any competent programmer could probably have the functionality up and running over a weekend - figure another day to do design, half a day to put together the "business plan" power-point, and another half to register a domain, incorporate and set up bank accounts (really how long does that take? - maybe it's harder in Australia). So what 4 days? Cool, that's 3 left - you could do another launch in that time.

The first rule of engineering is to set realistic goals. Because this is very public, it encourages him to be conservative in his time estimates.

It sounds like he's doing all kinds of later-stage things like opening business bank accounts, marketing, and so on, in the first week.

Personally, I'm surprised at the $500 budget. Maybe coffee costs more in Australia.

"... Personally, I'm surprised at the $500 budget. Maybe coffee costs more in Australia. ..."

    * Web hosting: $4.40

    * Static IP: $3.30

    * Domain name: $13

    * SSL certificate: $66

    * SMS modem: $172.50

    * Bank account: $6.50

    * SIM card: $5

    * Custom number: $22

The costs [0] look reasonable to me and the coffee is better in Aus :) ~ http://searchyc.com/bootload+coffee

[0] http://www.semi-blog.com/2010/01/startup-in-7-days-day-two-r...

Not listed there is $220 spent on setting up a billing provider (PayWay), which is the part that seems wasteful to me.

"... Not listed there is $220 spent on setting up a billing provider (PayWay) ..."

Didn't see that one.

If it logs your miles from a text message, that's a bit more complicated than a website.

SMS to web gateway, process the data, update the database, connect database to website, make functional website.

These are not super complicated on their own, but having them work together well and meet user expectations/needs is another matter.

He can then sell the service or advertising on the page. Sounds like a startup business to me. Not huge or sexy but money in the bank if done well.

Actually it's not that hard, I've done it before - once the account was set up (15 minutes) the SMS was integrated and tested in about an hour. He's certainly not opening his own SMS gateway with $500 so he's probably using a service where you get a 5 digit number that customers include in their texts (everyone has seen this I'm sure). The companies that supply this tech usually have a very easily integrated API so hooking it up is no more complex that hooking up to something like Twitter, in fact usually much simpler. Speaking of which I'd just hook it up to Twitter and let them be the gateway, saves a bunch on SMS fees (which cost you incoming - although this might be different in Australia).

Advertising is a pretty easy hook up as well, depending on the service.

Take a look at glunote.com, it's something that I threw together over a rainy weekend (and it certainly looks like it). It's for taking notes using Twitter and is probably at least as complicated as what he's doing. I'm sure there are a lot more examples around.

Twitter withdrew their SMS service in Australia quite some time ago. Both incoming SMS and calls are free in Australia.

"SMS to web gateway, process the data, update the database, connect database to website, make functional website."

..all but that last step are basically free with google app engine

Google has a SMS to web gateway on AppEngine?!?!?

GAE has email-to-web, and afaik all major cell carriers give you email-via-text for free.

If he can launch something successful in a couple of days of coding well good luck to him, unfortunately that's not the case for most startups, unless your going for a minimum viable product that in most spaces isn't going to attract more than some feedback.

If the MVP won't attract any more than some feedback, it's not really an MVP, is it? Doesn't seem particularly viable

Doesn't it usually take at least 10 days to get a short code for 2-way SMS? And it's going to cost more than $700 based on my research.

You're looking at the high-end of the market - he's using a GSM phone connected via a serial port as his SMS gateway.

Do you have any more information on this?

Sorry I missed your response. Many years ago I used Nokia 5110 and 6210 phones to do this. All that was needed was a serial cable, a list of the relevant AT commands and some Perl. Google should be able to fill in the gaps on how to do this, but if not just drop me an email (listed in my profile).

Actually acquiring a short code can take a long time I hear, however, there are many services out there to get you up and running in little time for a lot less. This is just one that I know of that with a nice API and takes no time to setup...

http://www.deeplocal.com/products/gumband

Reply on news.ycombinator.com