Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2019

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. After bootstrapping, friends and family are the most common funding sources for early-stage startups.

Intellectual Property 219

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 219

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

It’s more possible to bootstrap today than a few years ago, as the cost of entry continues to go down. 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. Practice living on a shoestring budget.

Equity 349

Equity Hockey Stick Bootstrapping Sweat Equity 349

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 11, 2020

They forget that adapting their company and themselves as their customers evolve is the key to long-term survival. Think of Blockbuster and Toys ‘R’ Us , both of whom missed customer changes and the move to online. Create an overt strategy to react to emerging customer trends. Remember when you were a startup?

Customer 359

Customer Institutional Investors Channel Acquisition 359

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 3, 2014

When someone asks me for the best way to fund a startup, I always say bootstrap it, meaning fund it yourself and grow organically. Bootstrapping avoids all the cost, pain, and distractions of finding angels or VCs, and allows you to keep control and all your hard-earned equity for yourself. Practice creative marketing.

Bootstrapping 278

Bootstrapping Startup Merger Salary 278

Genuine VC

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

The stats behind what Bryan and the team had accomplished while bootstrapping the business were incredible, including signing up over 1,000 paying accounts and analyzing over 30,000 code repositories EVERY DAY. In the three years since launching the business, they’ve become the clear market leader in SaaS static analysis.

Software Review 191

Software Review Chad Ruby PHP 191

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 18, 2020

Instead, knowing how to bootstrap your startup might be a better option. How to Bootstrap Your Startup. When you bootstrap your startup, you retain full control of the new business. If bootstrapping is right for your small business, the following tips can help you through the process. Focus on Your Customers.

Bootstrapping 145

Bootstrapping Startup Cofounder Angel Investor 145

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. Price is as important as any other feature to determine product/market “fit.” This is often B2C because the value is in quantity of customers, and there’s 100x more consumers than businesses. $1/mo

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 1, 2020

The primary source of your funds should be your paying customers, i.e., your business should generate enough revenues and profits to fund the growth and expansion. The next reason is to establish a competitive advantage over your competition and quickly acquire a substantial market share. Bootstrapping. Sources of funding. ?

Startup 150

Startup Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch Seed Stage 150

The Startup Magazine

NOVEMBER 28, 2018

Balodana provides store hosting and marketing as well as support services such as concierge customer service and style advice to ensure a superb customer experience. The market for men’s custom tailored garments exceeds $650M, and we believe there’s a significant untapped potential in the women’s market.

Technical Review 153

Technical Review Software Review Illinois Due Diligence 153

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 12, 2021

Tiny bootstrapped teams usually don’t have a business plan, and probably don’t need one. There is no substitute for knowing your customers first hand, and iterating on a minimum viable product to find the most marketable solution. They can iterate and evolve their business idea with a low burn rate and minimal dependencies.

Business Plan 316

Business Plan Technical Review Angel Investor Due Diligence 316

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 18, 2020

It’s more possible to bootstrap today than a few years ago, as the cost of entry continues to go down. 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. Practice living on a shoestring budget.

Hockey Stick 423

Hockey Stick Bootstrapping Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 423

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 14, 2014

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. After bootstrapping, friends and family are the most common funding sources for early-stage startups.

Entrepreneur 283

Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 283

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2017

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. After bootstrapping, friends and family are the most common funding sources for early-stage startups.

Product Development 177

Product Development Cost Developer Product 177

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 29, 2013

Even after the first hundred customers, half of those were serendipitous one-offs, not representative of repeatable, controllable customer acquisition, and the scale of the data isn’t statistically significant. The answer for a funded startup is “Bid as much as possible, to get as many customers — and data!

Bootstrapping 285

Bootstrapping Affiliate Cofounder Channel 285

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

It can be the idea, the customers, the mission, the grind—whatever it is; there’s something that keeps you going. Determine if there is a viable market. Sure, your friends and family say they love it, but that doesn’t guarantee that actual customers will. How large is the available market? That’s completely fine.

Forecast 154

Forecast Software Review Bootstrapping Finance 154

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. After bootstrapping, friends and family are the most common funding sources for early-stage startups.

Intellectual Property 309

Intellectual Property Technical Review Venture Capital Startup 309

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2018

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. After bootstrapping, friends and family are the most common funding sources for early-stage startups.

Intellectual Property 134

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 134

Version One Ventures

FEBRUARY 11, 2020

We often see one category filled with dozens of start-ups competing with a similar product for the same customers. Of course, they don’t have the engineering team to build the technology on their own – and this means that the number of enterprise software customers keeps growing. Buying cloud applications has become the norm.

Technical Review 196

Technical Review Vertical Software Review Portfolio 196

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 29, 2016

When you are bootstrapping a small business, you are not only the boss, you are also the person that cleans, greets customers, makes sales and, depending on your business, provides the service offered. I’ll expand on that last bit along with other lessons I learned along the way: Lack of Energy.

Bootstrapping 189

Bootstrapping New York City New Jersey New York 189

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 6, 2016

It’s more possible to bootstrap today than a few years ago, as the cost of entry continues to go down. 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. Practice living on a shoestring budget.

Bootstrapping 120

Bootstrapping Hockey Stick Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 120

Gust

OCTOBER 26, 2014

When someone asks me for the best way to fund a startup, I always say bootstrap it, meaning fund it yourself and grow organically. Bootstrapping avoids all the cost, pain, and distractions of finding angels or VCs, and allows you to keep control and all your hard-earned equity for yourself. Practice creative marketing.

Bootstrapping 176

Bootstrapping Startup Merger Salary 176

Duct Tape Marketing

AUGUST 23, 2023

The Impact of Community written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing Marketing Podcast with Lloyed Lobo In this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast , I interview Lloyed Lobo. He is the co-founder of Boast.ai, where he leveraged the Community-Led Growth model to bootstrap the company.

Community 53

Community Kuwait Cofounder Bootstrapping 53

Hearpreneur

AUGUST 11, 2021

Thanks to Richard Burner, Goals Marketing ! #2- With their affordability, you can invest in several and gain more return by earning customer trust before a sale occurs. You’re also wasting less time because selecting a micro-influencer means their audience is made up of potential target customers. Photo Credit: Ben Reynolds.

Entrepreneur 126

Entrepreneur Technical Review Social Media Bootstrapping 126

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

Bootstrap was term coined from the computer lingo ‘booting’ which means starting a computer or starting a chain of processes which eventually starts up the operating system. In the startup world, bootstrapping essentially means funding your own venture and not being too dependent on external sources. Spend Wisely. Experiment.

Bootstrapping 100

Bootstrapping Cofounder Startup Sales Cycle 100

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 19, 2019

The company functions as an online market-place, allowing for custom-quotes through text-message. Businesses bootstrapping their approach to progress will discover this service lucrative for: Incorporating. The organization works with businesses in all stages: early, mid and late stage. The package offers: Invoices. Accounting.

United Kingdom 113

United Kingdom Startup Software Review Bootstrapping 113

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 8, 2016

They don’t realize that according to statistics , more than 90 percent of satisfied entrepreneurs use bootstrapping, since other people’s money always comes with strings, most of them negative. Bootstrapping gives you the flexibility to explore creative alternatives. You left your corporate job to get away from budgets.

Bootstrapping 120

Bootstrapping Advisory Board Startup Venture Capital 120

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 29, 2024

This isn’t just about having a eureka moment; it’s about understanding the problem you’re solving and why it matters to your potential customers. Take the time to research your market, identify your target audience, and refine your idea until it’s both good and compelling.

Intellectual Property 131

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 131

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 12, 2010

Trouble is, customers don't want more features, they want the right features. As the competition also adds features, they reach a critical mass where they have all the features 80% of your customers want, and then just having "more" is no longer an interesting selling point. We're patenting our features. So where does that leave us?

Intellectual Property 319

Intellectual Property Bootstrapping Software Review Open Source 319

SoCal CTO

MARCH 1, 2010

Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition | For Entrepreneurs , February 2, 2010 Looks at the critical equation around customer acquisition cost vs. customer lifetime value similar to what I discussed in Startup Metrics but in more depth. Great stuff. This post looks at the implementation details of HTML 5 video.

Acquisition 150

Acquisition Cofounder Technical Cofounder Cost 150

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

by Annie Tsai, author of “ The Small Business Online Marketing Handbook: Converting Online Conversations to Offline Sales “ The technology takeover is here. It’s difficult to know where to start, where to focus, and where to invest the marketing dollars and time you have. Don’t panic, though. In fact, it’s a huge advantage.

Marketing 145

Marketing Social Media Reputation Small Business 145

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 14, 2014

Customize your website using one of the tools above, selecting one of the standard templates for design and layout. Now the real work begins – promotion, marketing, blogging, and all types of search engine marketing. Or, fall back to the old standby DreamWeaver by Adobe. Personalize a simple web site.

Startup 252

Startup eCommerce Hosting Bootstrapping 252

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 26, 2010

When someone asks me for the best way to fund a startup, I always say bootstrap it, meaning fund it yourself and grow organically. Bootstrapping avoids all the cost, pain, and distractions of finding angels or VCs, and allows you to keep control and all your hard-earned equity for yourself. Creative marketing. Do it yourself.

Bootstrapping 240

Bootstrapping Merger Salary .Net 240

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 16, 2023

External investors will demand a financial forecast, but it’s equally valuable to you, even if bootstrapping. Projecting financials is a natural extension of the homework every entrepreneur needs to do on customer opportunity size, product costs, pricing, competition and customer value. Forecast sales-volume expectations.

Forecast 290

Forecast Burn Rate Widget Business Plan 290

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 20, 2014

These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! The Optimal Average Customer Value for SaaS Startups – crowdspring.co/1ib05xm. How To Write A Startup Marketing Plan – crowdspring.co/1vtDkH3.

Social Media 93

Social Media Small Business Design Media 93

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 14, 2023

You probably realize that the leading edge is very near the bleeding edge, where only early adopter customers dare to tread. On the other hand, if you wait for competitors to get there first, you may be left in the dust with no customers. Otherwise, look for advances from distributors, vendors or even future customers.

Bootstrapping 339

Bootstrapping Business Model Social Media Partner 339

The Startup Magazine

AUGUST 24, 2021

Startups are always the hardest hit during difficult economic times, especially if your business is built on bootstrapping efforts. of marketing budgets to 23.2% — a 74% boost. The best way to leverage social media viewer engagement is with video marketing. Photo by airfocus on Unsplash. Leverage the Reach of Social Media.

Social Media 158

Social Media Marketing Startup SEO 158

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 13, 2014

All of the above costs can be completely avoided or drastically minimized by a bit of creative bootstrapping with minimal investment to launch courtesy of the world wide web. Social Media Marketing. Below is a list of the key components necessary to begin your business venture. Website & Hosting. For as little as $9.99

eCommerce 229

eCommerce Bootstrapping Social Media Hosting 229