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. The key to successful bootstrapping is to master the do-it-yourself approach, defer compensation or barter services whenever possible and become a frugal minimalist in all things requiring a cash outlay.

Bootstrapping 120

Bootstrapping Hockey Stick Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 120

SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2012

Hire a Product Design Lead First Nailing that elusive technical co-founder Why you can('t) recruit a technical cofounder AskBob: Where do I find developer cofounder? Things to Avoid When Recruiting Co-founders Finding Technical Cofounders Is Hard Need a Technical Co-founder?

Technical Cofounder 211

Technical Cofounder Cofounder CTO Hire Los Angeles 211

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. Hire experts, not help.

Bootstrapping 240

Bootstrapping Merger Salary .Net 240

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 16, 2016

Startup founders typically invest some real dollars into their new startup as well as months or years of their time with no salary. When a startup proclaims that it is cash-flow positive but pays no salary yet to the founders, investors call this Ramen-profitable. Sweat equity. Ramen-profitable.

Software Review 120

Software Review Sweat Equity Accredited Investor Angel Investor 120

Transformify

MAY 28, 2018

Now Hiring for an Intermediate C++ 3D Graphics Developer As part of the project team, your role will include leveraging the latest tools and technology in C++ 3D graphics for a diverse selection of desktop application software projects, as well as collaborating with your team in building innovative software products.

Developer 40

Developer North America Java Software Review 40

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 29, 2020

People are trapped at home, they are not getting a salary, and they are afraid to touch another person because no one knows who is and isn’t infected with the virus. In other words, you must start bootstrapping an online startup , because the future of the global business world is online. Ways to bootstrap a startup.

Bootstrapping 85

Bootstrapping Global Startup Hungary 85

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 19, 2013

Castrina, author of “ 8 Unbreakable Rules For Business Start-Up Success “ If you’re bootstrapping your own business, you know all about doing more with less. Yes, some low-skill positions can be filled by just about anyone and shouldn’t come with a high salary. Quality employees can make or break your company.

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Bootstrapping Employee Small Business Salary 187

The Next Web

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

My startup, BizeeBee, had run out of capital – and even though we were making money, it was just not enough to cover everyone’s salaries. I had to make a tough call: shut it down, get acqui-hired or keep it running. At the end of 2012, I was in a really tight spot. This story continues at The Next Web.

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Bootstrapping Salary Web Software 154

Up and Running

AUGUST 11, 2015

How ironic that it seems like more than 90 percent of the online information on startups is about getting financed—but more than 90 percent of startups are bootstrapped. What does bootstrapping mean? ” See Also Should I Borrow Money, Seek Investment, or Bootstrap My Business? The bootstrapping founder takes all the risk.

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Bootstrapping Startup Angel Investor Small Business Administration 60

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 23, 2013

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. Hire experts, not help.

Equity 241

Equity Bootstrapping Startup Merger 241

Up and Running

MARCH 8, 2016

According to data from PayScale’s salary questionnaire, house cleaners, nationwide, earned an average of $15.09 The people that hire you are taking you into their trust. If you do hire employees, they will also need these characteristics: Trustworthiness. Will you do everything yourself or hire employees? Take out a loan.

SBA 60

SBA Technical Review Software Review Business Plan 60

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 13, 2018

For many, “bootstrapping” involves lots of ramen noodle dinners, working weekends, and foregone hobbies. Live by the mantra: be slow to hire and quick to fire. That’s not a knock on anyone you might hire, to be clear. Every new employee you take on adds to your company’s liabilities: salary, benefits, office space, equipment.

Balance Sheet 113

Balance Sheet Bootstrapping Dividend Entrepreneur 113

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 21, 2011

The question is further complicated when the new hire is getting a salary. Typically the salary is less than market with the balance given in the form of equity, but again how do you compute that when the stock is, today, of no value? Here’s a simple framework for how to come up with those numbers.

Equity 276

Equity Salary Hiring Institutional Investors 276

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 9, 2015

Bootstrapping not only reduces cash needs, but increases commitment. The need to hire staff immediately. Salaried staff will never have the commitment of co-founders that depend on the success of the startup. Bootstrapping continues to be the preferred approach, giving you maximum ownership, control and agility.

Bootstrapping 120

Bootstrapping Cofounder Equity Agile 120

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 28, 2010

Common areas to address are decisions around capitalization, executive hiring and firing, share issuance (dilution), and acquisitions. Under what circumstances will someone decide that they just can't commit to the business full time anymore; for example, if the founders have to go without a salary for six months. Raise angel funding?

Cofounder 128

Cofounder Founder Equity Dilution 128

The Startup Toolkit

AUGUST 29, 2012

But they also need to see a product team , and hiring someone to build your version 1 does not bring you any closer to finding a team. So is there ever a time when it’s wise to hire out your prototype? For example, if you are a service business that has a website, hiring out version 1 makes perfect sense.

Sweat Equity 45

Sweat Equity Bootstrapping Equity Salary 45

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

Our wheelhouse is bootstrapped (or lightly capitalized) SMB SaaS. The mode purpose for funding is (in order of frequency) Sales, Marketing, Market Expansion, Product Development, and Hiring Employees. Founder Earnings = Net Income + any amount of founders’ salaries over a certain threshold. Bigfoot Capital.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 19, 2012

My company is profitable, and has been from day one. – every high-tech bootstrapped founder I know what you really mean. The first and biggest error is thinking you can ignore your own salary. When your business throws off $1500/mo (without salaries), that’s not the case.

Salary 246

Salary Bootstrapping Web Distribution 246

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2018

Unless you have some serious startup capital, chances are you’re going to want to bootstrap as much as you possibly can. If you’re working among friends and former colleagues, you have the luxury of paying yourself a reasonable salary and putting in the initial hours to get yourself off the ground. Figure Out Your Budget.

Intellectual Property 109

Intellectual Property Due Diligence Startup Social Media 109

The Entrepreneurial Mind

AUGUST 16, 2011

Bootstrapping is the name of the game for most startups. A bootstrapped startup also allows the entrepreneur to determine what the market really wants without having to lock in specific long-term expenses tied to a specific business model. In the bootstrap world you fight to survive. You watch every dollar very closely.

Bootstrapping 72

Bootstrapping Cofounder Salary Business Model 72

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 17, 2012

If we'd had to bootstrap it, I don't know if we could have done it," Davis says. It comes in the form of monthly reimbursement for expenses - which can include salaries, marketing and housing - and the payments from the government don't kick in until a couple months after participants arrive.

Chile 158

Chile Silicon Valley San Francisco Cofounder 158

K9 Ventures

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

couldn’t draw a salary). The latter was fine by me since there was no money in the company for me to draw a salary any way. I was bootstrapping the company and started with $5,000 that I had saved up from a prior summer internship. I hired my TA as my first employee and paid him $12.50 I formed SneakerLabs, Inc.

United States 114

United States Founder India Venture Capital 114

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 16, 2010

How do bootstrapped companies hire talent? Short answer: we posted in Craigslist for “Founding Engineers&# when we were starting and couldn’t pay salaries. How much should it cost for a bootstrapped, lean startup to incorporate (or form an LLC)?

Option Pool 88

Option Pool Analytics LLC Startup 88

BeyondVC

JULY 6, 2006

A clear kiss of death that I have seen more often than not is hiring a VP of Sales too early. On top of that, you figure that you want to hire the senior guy first so he can bring in his own troops. Hiring a VP of Sales too early can cost you dearly. The post When to hire a VP of Sales appeared first on BeyondVC.

Hiring 79

Hiring Sales Burn Rate Vertical 79

viniciusvacanti.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

Hire a Programmer The Hope: You’ll use the programmer to build a prototype that will get you traction and experience. You know how to product manage and you’ve hired programmers before. I recommend you start by reading this post on how to hire a programmer. I plan on bootstrapping my upcoming startup.

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Ruby 43

David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

—– Earnest Capital invests in bootstrapped companies to help them unlock more growth. All Earnest investments are made using the Shared Earnings Agreement (SEAL) – a custom salary/profit share structure, aligned with how most bootstrapped founders are compensated.

Equity 78

Equity Revenue Cofounder Colorado 78

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 30, 2010

To replace them, employers spend $11,500 average per healthcare employee acquisition cost (20% of the annualized salary plus hiring incentives is considered customary for acquisition cost). There is no available simple or inexpensive way for employer and employee to find each other except through Monster-type services.

India 115

India Silicon Valley Incubator Bootstrapping 115

The Entrepreneurial Mind

OCTOBER 11, 2010

Overhead includes staff salaries, such as bookkeepers, sales staff, supervisors and managers. When you make the decision to hire an extra bookkeeper, add another cell phone for your staff, or rent space to house your business, it increases your monthly overhead. Tags: bootstrapping Break-even overhead.

Bootstrapping 69

Bootstrapping Salary Sales Hiring 69

Bryce Dot VC

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

When we were asked early one how we would measure whether we were on to something our answer was getting half of the companies to market salary profitable. The remaining time is a combination of office hours with local practitioners and talks from bootstrapped or relevant founders. We’re not there yet, but can see a path to it.

Los Angeles 40

Los Angeles LP Bootstrapping Revenue 40

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 6, 2019

Gadea leveraged his connections in Silicon Valley to seed viral distribution of the product, which, in turn, generated the revenue to hire engineers and scale the company. is a SaaS tool that companies can use to assess engineers before they hire them. spent $1k on their MVP. Qualified.io Vested Technology spent $17k on their MVP.

Sweat Equity 78

Sweat Equity Software Review Vesting Cofounder 78

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 25, 2011

Maybe that means a big new advertising campaign, or hiring another WordPress expert for our staff.

Java 311

Java Software Review Technical Review Salary 311

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

Most people who bootstrap their business do it on their personal credit card and if yours are maxed out from the day you start your business you’re going nowhere fast. You got to be strategic especially with your time, with the partners that you align yourself with and even with the hires that you make. You are your own secretary.

Social Media 60

Social Media Small Business Software Review Technical Review 60

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 6, 2019

Gadea leveraged his connections in Silicon Valley to seed viral distribution of the product, which, in turn, generated the revenue to hire engineers and scale the company. is a SaaS tool that companies can use to assess engineers before they hire them. spent $1k on their MVP. Qualified.io Vested Technology spent $17k on their MVP.

Sweat Equity 50

Sweat Equity Software Review Vesting Cofounder 50

The Next Web

OCTOBER 10, 2013

Hire everyone you need as an employee. Since we bootstrapped Backblaze, early on we would have months when the company did not have enough cash from sales to buy the additional servers it needed. To start Backblaze, all five of us committed to a year without salary. You are the founder, the visionary, the uber-entrepreneur.

Cofounder 143

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Kenya Dilution 143

venturebeat.com

MARCH 8, 2011

You can’t afford to hire three developers to add features and bugs. In fact, any bootstrapped company should be aiming for slow, consistent growth rather than explosive growth. He was also a founding member of ITWatchdogs, another bootstrapped startup which became profitable and was sold, and is a mentor at Capital Factory.

Software Review 41

Software Review Startup Technical Review Mobile 41

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 13, 2020

Even if you are bootstrapping the business, and not looking for outside investors, the “rules of thumb” that smart investors look for should be the same ones that you use to assess your own risks and set reasonable expectations for progress and success. Demonstrate an understanding of business operation realities.

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Liquidity Event Forecast Exit Strategy Bootstrapping 308

www.mint.com

MARCH 9, 2010

However, a perfectly acceptable—and perhaps even better—answer is that there are no investors other than the founders, and the plan is to bootstrap the company as long as possible. Ask me these questions, you’re definitely not hired. Hopefully, there are one or two well-known venture capitalists.

Software Review 68

Software Review Startup Post-Money Valuation Technical Review 68