How to bootstrap a Startup with less than $10k. Meet Tipsandtrip.
thestartup.eu
thestartup.eu
Bootstrapping means creating a self-sustaining business. At a minimum, this means you have revenue to cover your running costs. You can only say "bootstrap with less than $10K" if that 10K gives your business enough revenue to cover its running costs. Yet this is what one of the founders has to say in another comment here on HN: We will try first to build a community/traffic and then will look for revenues.
I guess it's not the founders' fault that the article was written this way. But once they've spent a lot of time and money on actually building their community/traffic + the inevitable further development costs, and they start making some revenue, we'll know how much it cost them to bootstrap the business.
Some great tips for getting an MVP together though.
Naturally, what's more common is what sticks in their minds.
As an American in Vienna, I find this kind of cargo-culting everywhere.
In San Francisco, the answer was usually "my parents still pay my rent."
We built http://letsfreckle.com for "free" -- did all the work ourselves, while consulting.
If you're really passionate, you'll find a way. Sure, it would have been nice to have foregone the "while consulting" part, and done nothing but focus on our product all day long... but nobody was handing us a free lunch. So we did it, the way we could do it, without any particular hardship except being tired and annoyed.
EDIT: fixed tense. Living in a non-English-speaking country is wreaking havoc with my grammar.
I think those are the questions some people would like answered. Not because we are challenging you, but to understand the reality.
How did we keep a roof over our heads? The old fashioned way: working our asses off, saving, and with the cultivation of multiple income streams, as I mentioned above.
1. We did some consulting projects that we wouldn't have otherwise taken on, and saved the money. We raised our rates for a couple of these clients dramatically, because they absolutely required us, and the projects had tremendous time pressure.
2. My husband and I wrote and sell an ebook: http://jsrocks.com
3. We also developed a 1-day and 2-day variant of a JavaScript workshop, with a different angle than all others, and have given it twice times to individuals (selling tickets) and twice to corporations in 2010. We originally developed this course in Sept 09, and we've heavily revised and expanded it, but it's the same "product" we're taking around the world. Just like with the consulting, we saved the money. http://jsmasterclass.com
4. I'm teaching a course on how to bootstrap your first product to earn your first $1000 - http://yearofhustle.com. It's a 12-week course and the first round is just about over now. I tested the idea by doing a 3-hour teleconference call and selling tickets for $100 to start with, and the main feedback customers gave me was "MORE!" Then I... you guessed it... saved the money. (This one is just me and a friend, not with my husband.)
If things got bad, I would take on more consulting work, bust ass, and save again. Although I don't think I'll ever have to do that again, given the success of my or our various infoproducts/classes/training courses.
It's simple: I refuse to do anything but bootstrap. I will never take a penny in venture capital. I will never let the outside demands of another person screw with my career again.
I am also fully committed to doing whatever it takes to succeed, and that means being my own angel.
So when I decided those things, I sat my ass down and did my best to figure out how I could get money, fast, and with the least amount of effort.
I certainly won't fail because I believe, on some level, that there is something so special about me that I deserve to be able to work on just one thing and have my bills taken care of.
Enough information for you?
EDIT: By the way -- yes, I'm not doing it alone (and my husband is no slacker in the code department), but it's my grand plan. And, more importantly, this process is accelerating, because we're using the money earned/saved to pay a freelancer to help us develop our 2nd SaaS product, which will launch in September.
EDIT AGAIN: We launched Freckle in Dec 2008, by the way. We/I wrote the book in 2008/2009 (started selling as a beta in Jan 2009). We developed the course in Sept 09. All while heavily consulting.
Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that. What I meant to say is that it seems to conflict, or wasn't clear. I wasn't questioning what you were saying, I was just curious and wanted you to expand. Sorry if it came off as confrontational.
> Enough information for you?
I assumed, correctly, that what you did was a bit more than just what your short post made it out to be. You hustled, and you work hard. It's interesting to see how some people do it.
And yes. All this information is actually useful. It's encouraging to hear success stories.
Honestly, information like this is incredibly useful and at the very least, encouraging. =)
Edit: I get the sense that I might have offended you in some way. Maybe I'm being overly sensitive, but I'd rather just say that wasn't my intent. Again, I wasn't questioning you. I was just asking honest questions. Being curious. No offense was intended.
I am angry, but not at you. I'm sure it's not The Done Thing to admit you're pissed at your audience on the internet, but here goes: I'm pissed at my audience!
I am so freakin tired of people who whine about how it's tiring to work after their work, or that it's rough to work on two or more things at once, or that all they really wanna do is just work on their little pet project and not have to worry about bills.
It just smacks of entitlement. And, worse, avoidable failure.
Look, here's the thing. My story? Not remarkable. Not special. Not new.
I'm happy if you read it and feel encouraged. That's why I keep writing about it. But the fact is, I'm just doing what successful people have done forever -- hustlin the shit out of everything I got, and then some. Not sitting on their butt, not complaining, not waiting for an invitation, not waiting for somebody to map out the territory before they start walking.
If you really want to be inspired, look to biographies. Try one about Ben Franklin to start with.
I guarantee you that if you* read about what he did and where he came from, you will be knocked on your ass with humility when you look at the amount of effort you are expending and what you expect to happen in return.
* you being anyone, not just jasonlotito
While I agree with your sentiment, and understand what you mean from first hand experience, I think you might be confusing two type of people. There are people who will do nothing but complain, whine, and wait for that invitation.
But there are other people who are looking for more practical things. And here's the thing, saying you hustle the shit out of everything you got isn't exactly saying a whole lot.
Great. You hustle. But their is a big difference between hustling an ebook on javascript and hustling at an actual job. The ebook requires more time up front I imagine. The job requires constant time. I'm pretty sure finding a part time job instead of the ebook would have hurt in the long run.
It's practical stuff like that which helps some people. Knowing that you've sold 1400+ copies demonstrates that yes, their is a market for that sort of thing. I guess what I'm trying to say is that while you aren't doing anything new, their are specifics that allow you to succeed in what you do. Those specifics go a lot farther.
I could say my startup succeeded because I worked hard. That's true enough, but their are a lot of things I did to make it work, and that's the reality. That's the meat of it.
> No need to backpedal quite so much. You didn't offend me.
I tend to be an opinionated ass. I'm trying hard to change; I'm rather paranoid I still come off that way.
Why trust my story more than Ben Franklin's? Or Richard Branson's? Or 37Signals'?
Their stories are out there for the taking.
To you, I'm just some random voice on the internet.
Sure, you're right, there are people who will whine and never do a thing, and people who have better potential (judging from this current moment in time, anyway). But a lot of those people with potential are waiting for the stories to come to them. Like they're saying, _You old world, you bastard, I'm going to sit here until you prove I can do it. I refuse._
The exact recipes for success are available everywhere. You don't need to wait for some random chick on HN who gets her jollies yelling at people to get off their asses. Waiting gets you nowhere.
As for the ebook -- the earnings divided by the time it took was less than what I could have made consulting, but the reward is more than just the money it made directly - although that's an appreciable amount.
You didn't need me to prove there was a market for "that kind of thing," either. People have been proving that for decades. Just look at all the people who make a great living selling information products alone.
FTR: I never said that the reason for my success was "hard work" or "hustle." That's part of it, yes, but I never just say that.
There is a lot of value in learning from other people's experiences. Spencer Fry has a fantastic article on the topic of bootstrapping in general(http://spencerfry.com/how-to-bootstrap) but I'd really love to see somebody get down to the nitty gritty financial details of dollars in vs. dollars out - the holy crap, how are we going to pay rent in 2 months? stuff - in the stages of a startup that hasn't yet reached ramen profitability.
But, when it comes down to it... how do you handle a startup before it's profitable? Simple: the same way you'd handle unemployment, a sabbatical, taking time off to take care of a baby, or whatever else you'd want to do that would drastically limit (or entirely eliminate) your income.
You create a budget, you decide how long you plan to live without income, you figure out a way to come up with the product of Your Budget x Months Without Income.
Information and advice on budgeting for any type of time-without-income will do the trick for you, if you need more guidance. Startups aren't special.
What good would it help you to know how much my rent is?
I agree that this app is going to face fierce competition from well funded companies, but the accomplishment so far is great so congrats and best of luck!
Any suggestions for how you'd proceed if you knew up front that you were facing a much longer development cycle?
280North and Dropbox are developing brand new and break-trough technology; they need a full team of experienced hackers, loads of money and a grand vision to realize that.
Of course the payoff is different..