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

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 16, 2011

Freshdesk First, Girish Mathrubootham from Chennai, India, pitched Freshdesk , a SaaS company that provides small and medium businesses with on-demand customer support software that offers multi-channel social support. Freshdesk introduces itself as a kind of Salesforce.com for customer support so to speak.

India 123

India Bootstrapping Non-Compete Entrepreneur 123

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. Are these assertions unfair?

Intellectual Property 319

Intellectual Property Bootstrapping Open Source Software Review 319

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. Then, consider how you’ll reach your customers and what kind of relationship you want to build with them.

Intellectual Property 125

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 125

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 21, 2023

Here is my list of the ten most common sources of funding today, in reverse priority sequence, with some rules of thumb to channel your focus: Seek a bank loan or credit-card line-of-credit. Negotiate an advance from a strategic partner or customer. Another common example is exchanging equity for legal and accounting support.

Equity 266

Equity Startup SBA Small Business Administration 266

View from Seed

JULY 7, 2015

His company is a bootstrapped startup (for now, he says) that helps other software companies price their products based on what customers will actually pay — and essentially avoid leaving revenue on the table. Startup Lessons You’ll Learn: What tradeoffs a bootstrapped startup’s CEO makes. Inside the Episode.

Bootstrapping 120

Bootstrapping Founder Boston Cofounder 120

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 5, 2021

External investors will demand a financial forecast, but it’s equally valuable to you, even if bootstrapping. Project based on your market size how many widgets you will sell in every channel. That’s no fun for you, your investors or your customers. Forecast sales-volume expectations. Marty Zwilling.

Forecast 369

Forecast Burn Rate Startup Widget 369

ConversionXL

MARCH 31, 2021

Customer interviews allow you to uncover: Why they decided to do business with you; Why they love working with you; What other challenges they have in their business; Where they go for new information. Your customers can provide you with pain-points to write about, as well as success stories to attract new clients.

Audience 127

Audience Non-Compete Distribution Channel 127

Duct Tape Marketing

AUGUST 23, 2023

He is the co-founder of Boast.ai, where he leveraged the Community-Led Growth model to bootstrap the company. where he leveraged a community-led growth model to bootstrap the company. Then another time was when we were bootstrapping both. They created the customer success community a category. We were expecting twins.

Community 52

Community Cofounder Bootstrapping Kuwait 52

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. They are gaining valuable customer data.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 29, 2020

Here is my list of the ten most common sources of funding today, in reverse priority sequence, with some rules of thumb to channel your focus: Seek a bank loan or credit-card line-of-credit. Negotiate an advance from a strategic partner or customer. Another common example is exchanging equity for legal and accounting support.

Equity 436

Equity Small Business Administration SBA Syndicate 436

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 7, 2007

This is typically called “bootstrapping&# and it is fraught with potential pitfalls and dangers. What is bootstrapping? So, what does it mean to bootstrap a company? Bootstrapping involves launching a business on a low budget. Why bootstrap? Either way, bootstrapping is a viable model.

Bootstrapping 41

Bootstrapping Offshore Startup EC2 41

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

To do a solid holiday season he will need to balance the inventory and marketing budgets, and getting stuck in a complex situation with inventory being stuffed in the retail channels with bad terms will be a kiss of death. I will connect the company to a few larger companies that may be good OEM channels for them. JCLABoutique.com.

India 114

India Silicon Valley Bootstrapping Incubator 114

The Next Web

OCTOBER 16, 2013

The Next Web’s Entrepreneur channel exists because there enough people like us who are tired of working dead end jobs, yearning to be our own bosses and run our own companies. They both require the ability to bootstrap and exploit the most of what you have to offer – all at little to no cost. Remember, bootstrapping has no rules.

Bootstrapping 143

Bootstrapping Cofounder Silicon Valley Video 143

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 9, 2023

Businesses require an equally elegant business model, with the right price, messaging and delivery channel to the right target customers to keep the dream alive and growing. The founder had simply not done the work to validate a price and customer segment. Test your channel and support strategy.

Technical Review 220

Technical Review Advisory Board Software Review Business Model 220

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

And as you may suspect, the stakes are fairly high: If you don’t connect with consumers in the right ways and invest in the right social channels, your efforts could very well have no impact — or worse, a detrimental effect — on your business. Think about the terms customers might use when searching for a business like yours.

Marketing 145

Marketing Social Media Reputation Small Business 145

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 19, 2010

First is that there are, perhaps, a thousand people in the world of entrepreneurship who know what they are doing when it comes to dealing with issues like financing, positioning, market sizing, customer validation, customer acquisition and other seemingly obvious topics that all entrepreneurs need to deal with. Rangrut.com.

Silicon Valley 114

Silicon Valley Technical Review Startup Early Stage 114

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 30, 2021

Businesses require an equally elegant business model, with the right price, messaging and delivery channel to the right target customers to keep the dream alive and growing. The founder had simply not done the work to validate a price and customer segment. Test your channel and support strategy.

Technical Review 399

Technical Review Product Advisory Board Business Model 399

Haystack

JUNE 5, 2018

Not yet profitable but invaluable to developers worldwide, the decade-old company bootstrapped, differentiated from formidable competitors GitLab and Atlassian’s BitBucket, weathered leadership upheavals, and eventually ingested lots of venture capital which helped them weather the challenges they faced.

Acquisition 71

Acquisition Azure Open Source Venture Capital 71

Up and Running

MARCH 8, 2016

It will help you find customers, and craft the right marketing messages so that they choose you! You’ve spoken to your customers. Either way, by the end of the process, which should only take a couple of hours, you’ll have a much better handle on who you are, what your competitive advantage is, and who your customers are.

SBA 60

SBA Technical Review Software Review Business Plan 60

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 3, 2010

I asked her not to assume that investors will be investing in this business idea, at least not until she can acquire some level of validation, which means tens, if not hundreds of thousands of customers, and several partnerships with daily deal sites. Venture capitalists today don't exactly practice venture capital. Gnosis India.

Channel 115

Channel India Bootstrapping Silicon Valley 115

Gust

JUNE 19, 2012

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 want a forecast that starts with specifics like channels or traffic and conversions or segments and builds up. Of course, every approach has pros and cons. Power Pitches.

Startup 180

Startup Forecast Angel Investor Software 180

Austin Startup

AUGUST 2, 2018

In Austin alone, the group has over 3K members, an active Slack channel and plenty of events. Workshops included topics of price-setting, customer acquisition and legal considerations when starting a business. It was a great experience to not only talk about that bootstrap startup life, but see and interact with student entrepreneurs.

Austin 57

Austin Software Review Technical Review Entrepreneur 57

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 10, 2018

Here is my list of the ten most common sources of funding today, in reverse priority sequence, with some rules of thumb to channel your focus: Seek a bank loan or credit-card line-of-credit. Negotiate an advance from a strategic partner or customer. Another common example is exchanging equity for legal and accounting support.

Entrepreneur 240

Entrepreneur Equity Small Business Administration SBA 240

Early Growth Financial Services

MAY 27, 2014

CHANNEL YOUR INNER SETH GODIN “When I was starting TalentEgg, I read a lot of Seth Godin, and one point stood out to me in particular. Previously published in YEC. Question: How should bootstrappers allocate resources for marketing and advertising? How do you figure out what’s reasonable when your company is still new?

Bootstrapping 35

Bootstrapping Advertising Marketing Channel 35

ConversionXL

JANUARY 9, 2019

Organize existing data into an idealized customer journey. Those interactions occur across teams (marketing, sales, customer support) and platforms (analytics, CRM, email). It starts with a survey of all known customer data. Step 2: Organize existing data into an idealized customer journey. Analyze and act on that data.

Sales Cycle 127

Sales Cycle Conversion Bootstrapping Web 127

Hearpreneur

NOVEMBER 10, 2020

As a bootstrapped company, fuelling your own growth can be challenging and comes with many lessons learned. Matt sees a huge opportunity to bring technology to SMBs that help them understand how to optimize their processes around demand generation to achieve better results from any of their marketing channels. Tell us your story.

North America 72

North America Bootstrapping Lead Generation Demand 72

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 26, 2012

So, Eric will need to create a method with which to get to paying customers before any investor would invest. This is a compelling idea, because many restaurants that have experimented with Groupon-like services have often been overwhelmed with unprofitable customers showing up during peak hours. Investors rarely fund concepts.

Jacksonville 114

Jacksonville Florida PPC Programming 114

Up and Running

DECEMBER 23, 2019

Bootstrapping, saving funds over years, borrowing from friends and family, taking out a bank loan and pitching investors are all viable options, but some will work better than others for your specific business. . The garage sale approach is a simple, fiscally safe and effective approach to bootstrapping a services-based business.

Finance 92

Finance Sweat Equity Bootstrapping Entrepreneur 92

YoungUpstarts

JULY 8, 2014

Some of the primary reasons so many businesses have turned to it include: - Prove Market Demand: Determine whether a potential customer base exists before producing your product. Fund R&D: Bootstrapped raising funds is far ‘cheaper’ than debt or equity. Establishing Sustainable Sales Channels.

Campaign 187

Campaign Channel Database Bootstrapping 187

ReadWriteStart

JULY 18, 2011

The first stage is bootstrapping, where you raise between $50k and $100k and you try to make that money last as long as you can. feedback from early users/customers (qualitative and quantitative) that's meaningful and in the target demographic. Clavier recommends the book Do More Faster: Techstars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup.

Investment Bankers 153

Investment Bankers Technical Review Cofounder Due Diligence 153

Hearpreneur

NOVEMBER 10, 2020

As a bootstrapped company, fuelling your own growth can be challenging and comes with many lessons learned. Matt sees a huge opportunity to bring technology to SMBs that help them understand how to optimize their processes around demand generation to achieve better results from any of their marketing channels. Tell us your story.

Bootstrapping 62

Bootstrapping North America Lead Generation Demand 62

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2014

Here is my list of the ten most common sources of funding today, in reverse priority sequence, with some rules of thumb to channel your focus: 10. Negotiate an advance from a strategic partner or customer. Seek a bank loan or credit-card line-of-credit. Another common example is exchanging equity for legal and accounting support.

Entrepreneur 283

Entrepreneur Startup Equity Small Business Administration 283

The Next Web

AUGUST 26, 2013

Raise your first round of money, or bootstrap. You either do it on your own, taking all risks and responsibility yourself (“bootstrapping”), or you find investors that believe in your company. We’ve had a lot of success promoting job openings through newsletters to our user base as well as through our social media channels.

Management 120

Management Cofounder Startup Bootstrapping 120

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 27, 2015

Even if your business is primarily offline, new potential customers are increasingly relying on online channels, such as search and social media, to research and inform their purchasing decisions. It’s no wonder that our own customers told us that “website” was the #1 intended purpose for their shiny new logo design.

Design 100

Design Social Media Channel Bootstrapping 100

OnlyOnce

JULY 9, 2013

Chapter 2: Defining and Testing the Story…Start Out By Admitting You’re Wrong, A Lean Business Plan Template, Problem, Solution, Key Metrics, Unique Value Proposition and Unfair Advantages, Channels, Customer Segments, Cost Structure and Revenue Streams. Chapter 3: Telling the Story to Your Investors…The Business Plan is Dead.

Startup 95

Startup Advisory Board Elevator Pitch Forecast 95

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 18, 2016

Crowdfunding essentially lets your customers “pre-order” your product mainly based on its promise. You may invest this pre-order money to build your product which you deliver to your customers after you are in business. Alternate Funding Channels: There are several other alternatives that one could seek to fund their startup.

Startup 100

Startup Equity Bootstrapping Early Stage 100