Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 14, 2014

Bootstrap if you can, otherwise climb the pyramid of family, friends, Angels, and VCs. Offer low cash early, with bonuses or stock options for milestones, to people in your personal network. No one wants to put in money until you have a product, and you need money to build the product. The right motivated employees dilemma.

Hockey Stick 268

Hockey Stick Cofounder Entrepreneur Liquidity Event 268

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2017

Bootstrap if you can, otherwise climb the pyramid of family, friends, angels, and VCs. Offer low cash early, with bonuses or stock options for milestones, to people in your personal network. No one wants to put in money until you have a product, and you need money to build the product. The right motivated employees dilemma.

Hockey Stick 144

Hockey Stick Cofounder Entrepreneur Liquidity Event 144

Scalable Startup

AUGUST 9, 2018

Option Three: Or don’t raise funding. If you’re bootstrapping, you don’t need to worry about either of these options. If you’ve already soft launched, have a product available, are telling the world about your awesome company but don’t have revenue/user growth, you’re probably in the red zone. They’re betting on you.

Technical Cofounder 20

Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Early Stage Cofounder 20

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2013

Bootstrap if you can, otherwise climb the pyramid of family, friends, Angels, and VCs. Offer low cash early, with bonuses or stock options for milestones, to people in your personal network. No one wants to put in money until you have a product, and you need money to build the product. The right motivated employees dilemma.

Founder 245

Founder Hockey Stick Cofounder Liquidity Event 245

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

And standing out to a company that got $10 million dollars in funding even before they started Asana is going to be very hard if you bootstrap it with your savings. I think another thing you wanted to talk about was the whole keep bootstrapping or raise money question. Jason: That’s called bootstrapping, right.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

ithacaVC

APRIL 10, 2012

It is part of the startup routine, prior to fund raising, to bootstrap and be super frugal. So, talk to them about adjusting the cap table prior to our investment – have the board grant you stock options (to avoid a tax issue) prior to our investment to compensate you for the deferred comp.” Enough said.

Cap Table 49

Cap Table Pre-Money Valuation Stock Options Due Diligence 49

Board Effect

MAY 13, 2019

Cap Table Management While Bootstrapping. When bootstrapping a startup, this is the bare minimum founders should have in place to avoid being caught off-guard by an angel investor. However, many businesses offer stock options as an incentive to attract executive talent. This is where things tend to get sloppy.

Cap Table 40

Cap Table Management Liquidity Event Dilution 40

The Next Web

AUGUST 14, 2013

Incubators like Y Combinator are certainly a viable route to take to help you move from bootstrapped startup to seed round. Had we tried to raise money as a bootstrapped startup in Missouri, I suspect we would have struggled. Keeping a startup alive in the early days is all about having a cockroach-like “don’t die” attitude.

Founder 142

Founder Incubator Cofounder Accredited Investor 142

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 27, 2011

There are plenty of folks who wouldn’t sell their company for a billion dollars; Jason Fried and Joel Spolsky are public examples from the bootstrapped startup world. There are plenty of folks who wouldn't sell their company for a billion dollars; Jason Fried and Joel Spolsky are public examples from the bootstrapped startup world.

Sales 235

Sales Term Sheet Stock Deal Structure 235

The Entrepreneurial Mind

MAY 19, 2010

For full time employees non-traditional compensation might include creative bonus plans, profit sharing plans, stock, stock options, phantom stock, and/or stock appreciation rights plans. But bootstrapping has found its way to the recruiting process.

Non-Compete 40

Non-Compete Marketing Stock Options Stock 40

Tim Keane

JANUARY 12, 2010

Bootstrapping. Greg Gianforte: Bootstrapping Your Business: Start And Grow a Successful Company With Almost No Money. Seen from a 35,000-foot vantage point, term-sheets and valuations are a method of assessing risk and making mutual promises about assuming various risk components. October 2010. September 2010. Categories.

Term Sheet 68

Term Sheet Valuation Dividend Liquidation Preference 68

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Jones This is roughly how I bootstrapped my current startup (just raised a decent series B so things seem to be on the right track). I’m never approached as a partner but, instead, get this spiel about “bootstrapping&# and “seeking funding&# and something about an exciting new project I could learn a lot of stuff doing.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84