Bootstrapping a Start-Up in Silicon Valley | Hacker News Reader

Bootstrapping a Start-Up in Silicon Valley

boss.blogs.nytimes.com

34 pointsdonohoe7 comments

"Still, we do have a hard time finding experienced managers here in Silicon Valley. Most of our managers are homegrown, and we’ve had to teach them to be managers."

Is this such a bad thing? Is it not generally better to have your managers come up through the ranks and create the corporate culture from the inside rather than bring in outsiders to impose one?

It sounds like they are happy with the results they get but they're aware that it takes a lot of work; you can't just promote someone and expect them to know what they're doing right away. That they gave up on hiring people they don't know who have the word 'manager' plastered on their resume tells me they're a lot wiser than most other firms.

Props to her for being a female entrepreneur AND bootstrapping in SV.

However, one advantage she had over most people was she had already been a CEO of a VC backed company and learned a lot from that. I'm pretty sure what she learned in that experience proved invaluable in her second company.

With the present army of unemployed workers out there, why aren't more people getting together and investing sweat equity to create something of value? The opportunity cost is practically zero for a lot of folks.

"Q. What do your V.C.-funded friends think of what you’re doing?

Ms. Charnock: They alternate between envy, awe, disbelief, and thinking that I am totally crazy."

"For the first year and a half, none of our 13 employees received a paycheck."

How did she find / convince 13 people willing to work off of sweat equity?

13 into 100% (even if a few get a little bit bigger cut) is a whole lot more equity than you'd get out of the typical post-VC employee equity pool.

probably a combination of:

   compelling vision / compelling problem
   prior shared success with her on other projects
   many were probably part time
   strong people skills

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