Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 9, 2018

Bootstrapping allows you to maintain full control of your startup strategy, retain maximum equity, and avoid the time delay and energy spent to attract outside investors. You need a business degree to start a venture today. Business strategies are best learned from experience.

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YoungUpstarts

APRIL 12, 2018

But I’ve also dealt with many successful entrepreneurs who were exposed to that model for bootstrapping and trying new ventures through their parents and others close to them,” he adds. “I I think that’s helped many grapple realistically with the demanding aspects of business ownership, and also set them up for success.”.

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Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Business customers, depending on the problem, are less price sensitive than consumers.

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Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

At Hustle Fund, we back both first time founders as well as repeat founders. One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Business customers, depending on the problem, are less price sensitive than consumers.

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Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

What matters is proving the viability of the company’s business model, what investors call “traction.&# It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. This is an incredible skill, one that most engineers overlook.

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YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 5, 2012

“The Internet is the first place most people turn to find information and learn virtually anything, but there’s no sense of organization — you have to stumble through, often running into dead ends along the way,” says Kris Chinosorn, who started MentorMob with fellow University of Illinois graduate and co-founder Vince Leung. “At

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

I think this idea is particularly appealing to those of us from an engineering background. One way to conceive of our goal in an early-stage venture is to incrementally “fill in the blanks&# for the business model that we think will one day power our startup. The solution is to change our focus from outputs to inputs.

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Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

What makes this tricky is that markets evolve, and an innovative technology or business model can transform a normal market into a Glengarry Glen Ross market. Google realized that being the way to find the world’s information was a blitzscalable market, thanks to the network effects in its AdWords revenue engine.

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thenetsetter.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Collis Taeed 16th March Business Models 9 Comments One of the best sources of information on startups is the obscenely talented Paul Graham who has written a wealth of essays on the subject. Even less-obvious founders like the internet media personality and Digg founder Kevin Rose actually began in computer science.

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Up and Running

NOVEMBER 27, 2017

To avoid these extremes, there are several questions which we use at Subbly whenever someone is either considering a subscription business model or just getting started. Is your business idea focused mainly on product promotion, or the service through careful experience design? So, the planning stage can feel high stakes.

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David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

This essay is part of a series on alternative VC: I: Revenue-Based Investing: a new option for founders who care about control. III: Why are Revenue-Based VCs investing in so many women and underrepresented founders? II: Who are the major Revenue-Based Investing VCs? IV: Should your new VC fund use Revenue-Based Investing?

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Up and Running

JULY 23, 2018

For months, the founders knew deep down that we were just around the corner from closing, but they just hung on to the hope that things would improve. I explained the scenario and firmly advised them to wrap up before it was too late, but the owners still wanted me to find ways to help the business survive.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 18, 2010

Myth: Lean Startups are small bootstrapped startups. What differentiates them is their disciplined approach to determining when to spend money: after the fundamental elements of the business model have been empirically validated. Myth: Lean Startups are small bootstrapped startups.

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This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 26, 2011

Credit cards "just work" and peer to peer transactions just aren't big enough to bootstrap a network. What's the business model? I think you'll see a lot of focus on companies like Tumblr, Twitter, Foursquare and Pinterest--services that haven't really established a business model yet to justify their sky high valuations.

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ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 27, 2011

Persistent is breaking out of the mold of labor arbitrage, and looking at new and exciting business models. My friend Tony Scott did an outstanding interview with Anand Deshpande , their CEO recently in which Anand discussed his vision for where he wants to take the OPD business. SOCO Games. Photo by nosheep. Discuss.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Welcome back to Smart Bear Live … the show were Jason speaks with entrepreneurs looking to improve their businesses. Listen to this episode if you want to hear about a founder who has a product and users and paying customers … and is trying to figure out how to take his company to the next level and grow faster.

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Professor VC

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Business, Engineering, Computer Science, and Design were all represented. We need a program that not only has a speaker series and mentor program, but also fosters collaboration among the Engineering and Business departments. Collaboration with engineering, computer science, life sciences, etc. Bootstrapping 101.

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Professor VC

FEBRUARY 26, 2008

As I mentioned in the previous post, Jeff Fluhr (founder of StubHub) recently stopped by my Entrepreneurial Finance class to share his 4 Lessons of Entrepreneurship with the students. Dan Gordon, founder of Gordon Biersch , came by my class this week. Bootstrapping 101. Survey says VC's invest on Gut Instinct. ► May.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 31, 2011

Today it would be near-impossible to bootstrap Smart Bear on those keywords. No, but you have other unfair advantages — you have insight into some market, you have an unlikely team that can both build and sell, you have a rolodex, you have a business model others can’t duplicate, or something else.

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Customer Software Review SEM Technical Review 279

Up and Running

MAY 28, 2015

We recently had Tim Berry, Palo Alto Software founder and business planning expert, present our Bplans audience with his latest advice on lean business planning. You have visits that you assume through organic search engine optimization. I strongly endorse bootstrapping, and I will tell you I speak from experience.

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Lean Business Plan Video Software Review 60

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

The one-page pitch format is also more suitable for SaaS businesses that are constantly testing new ideas. Your pitch is going to cover your strategy (what you’re going to do), your tactics (how you’re going to do it), your business model (how you will make money), and your schedule (who is doing what and when).

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. The best composition is probably one engineer whose passion lies in the pixels on the screen and another engineer whose passion is making bits fly really fast through servers. and Google.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

I continue to work on additional programs and products for bootstrapped and angel-backed startups, as well as for enterprise and future entrepreneurs. I love the business model. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. We are really looking forward to this.one day wasn't enough! Great idea.

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ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 4, 2011

One of the discussions that ensued was about how to bootstrap a freemium venture. How do you find co-founders who are willing to work for 18 months without getting paid? Irit, however, needs to think through some of the details of the business model, pricing model, and positioning. Hope to see you there!

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Up and Running

MAY 28, 2015

The title is “ What Does It Take to Start a Comic Book Business? It’s an interview with Brian, who’s the head of Robot Paper, founder of Robot Paper. Jonathan: Yeah, he’s actually the founder of Robot Paper, but that’s not his only job. How does that compare versus doing something like bootstrapping or something like that?

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ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 11, 2011

On the topic of business models, Spencer proposed building traffic and then selling the company, which I pushed back on. We spent considerable time exploring ways to verticalize the app and creating an ad-supported business model instead, which would also broaden his exit options considerably. About Sramana Mitra.

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online.wsj.com

SEPTEMBER 23, 2012

When youve bootstrapped a business where youre not drawing a salary and depleting whatever savings you have, thats one of the very difficult things to do," says Toby Stuart, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Consider Daniel Dreymann, a founder of Goodmail Systems Inc.,

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Venture Capital Software Review Rhode Island North Dakota 107

Austin Startup

MAY 3, 2017

Some large companies can bolster their position by buying out established technology and business models rather than creating them anew. photo featuring the guitar because Austin Foster notes of Taylor’s experience, “the benefits of bootstrapping come down to what Taylor calls ‘optionality.’ too obvious?) United Airlines staff?

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 8, 2012

Pin It Listen to this episode if you want to hear a really tough conversation about refining a cool idea into a profit-making business. This is a long episode (1:20), but it’s a conversation that will resonate with a lot of early-stage startup founders. You’re an engineer, is that true? Jared: Right. Jared: Okay.

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API Software Review Hosting Technical Review 220

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 22, 2009

At this point in my career I didn’t understand that the goal of getting outside the building was not only finding markets with potential customers to sell to but also confirming the company’s vision, business model and product/market fit. Early startup customers are visionaries just like the founders selling to them.

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Life Beyond Code

SEPTEMBER 27, 2011

Our community has successfully established a culture of bootstrapping as a counterforce to the compulsive rush to financing that entrepreneurs mistakenly often engage in, only to be rejected over and again by investors. Consequently, they are able to make decisions about their businesses in more astute and sophisticated ways.

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Programming Silicon Valley Bootstrapping Technical Review 116

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2011

Blogs weren’t popularized yet so it was an oddity for me to read the founder of a software company spewing out advice. Joel met his co-founder for Fog Creek software and learned a valuable management lesson. Mark: Google had trouble dealing with customers and contracts because they historically were so engineering driven.

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techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Been there Done that This is very depressing for all future founders, or even currently early stage founders. A little piece of advice for future founders: find something that turns revenue quick, profitable and cash flow positive quick and forget about fantasy businesses that take a decade to turn profitable like twitter!

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Venture Capital Technical Review Sweat Equity Valuation 62

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Team Configuration 500 Startups Guerilla Marketing Organizations Entrepreneurship Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs Startups Startup Incubators and Seed Programs Seedcamp Y Combinator TechStars Lean Startups What is the perfect startup team? Lakshman Prasad • Nov 16, 2010.

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Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

sivers.org

JUNE 25, 2010

The programmer will probably not understand your business model, and therefore cant help you point out anything that doesnt make sense in the requirements. Nothing essential that I disagree with you in your post, but when read by other people with minimal software engineering experience, they can have too high expectations.

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CTO Hire Hiring Software Review Technical Review 84

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

.” Hackernews list of “Tools of the Trade” for startups - includes over 150 SaaS tools used by startups, and over 150 comments with interesting insights from founders. Design/Front End: Twitter Bootstrap : Include this in your website, and you are half finished. Firebase : Are all your developers front-end engineers?

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Software Review Technical Review Startup 53