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Bootstrapping Organic Growth Makes Startup Sense

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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. Image via Flickr from Food For Thought album.

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Don’t Let Investors Conclude Your Startup Is A Hobby

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Unless you are bootstrapping everything, you need to have a clear plan on what networking and documents are required to get to friends and family, Angel investors, and institutional investors. Billing and revenue collection. If you are contracting or outsourcing, this is even more important. Funding process.

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10 Incentives For Entrepreneurs To Bootstrap Their Startup

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Based on the Startup Environment Index from the Kauffman Foundation and LegalZoom a while back, personal money, or bootstrapping, continues to be the primary startup funding source. At least wait until later, when you ready to scale, and have some “leverage” based on a proven business model, some real customers, and real revenue.

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The 10 Best Sources of Cash to Start Your Business

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For example, with any outside investment, you give up some ownership and control, and with bootstrapping your growth curve will likely be longer and more organic. Following is my prioritized larger list of sources, with some “rules of thumb” which may save you a lot of time and energy: Bootstrapping. Friends and family.

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Gust Blog - Thoughts on startups by investors that fund them

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For example, with any outside investment, you give up some ownership and control, and with bootstrapping your growth curve will likely be longer and more organic. I’ll try to offer some guidelines to address these issues, but I generally recommend you keep the day job until your new company is producing real revenue. June 17th, 2012.

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How to Reduce Your Budget and Reduce Startup Risk

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Starting your business with a very low investment is called “bootstrapping,” and these entrepreneurs usually have the most fun. Other examples are recurring revenue streams, like subscription fees, or referral fees, or subcontracting where you take a percentage. E-commerce on the Internet is a good example of this.

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The right investors for the right stage

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At this stage, your startup better be selling a commercial offering, have price and cost validated, with significant customer sales and a real revenue stream. This normally means more then 30 employees, and more then $1 million in revenue. Lesser amounts remain in the angel realm. Growth stage. Exit stage.