Spencer Fry

APRIL 17, 2017

Days before the conference started, I was asked (and felt honored) to lead two workshops on bootstrapping vs. raising money. Having started and sold 3 successful bootstrapped businesses, and am now running 1 venture capital backed business ( Coach ), this is a topic I know a thing or two about. What's “good” about bootstrapping.

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Bootstrapping Cap Table Liquidation Preference Cofounder 63

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 11, 2010

And that they don’t set your co-founders or key employees against you in meetings. Demands on your time. Remember what happened to the alleged co-founders when Peter Thiel came in? Well, some of the people who considered themselves co-founders suddenly found out they weren’t! Deadlines and benchmarks.

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Advisory Board Cofounder Phoenix Arizona 233

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

John Borchers, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Decathlon Capital, claims to be the largest revenue-based financing investor in the US. RBI structures help to protect the equity of both founders and investors. However, according to Bryce Roberts, co-founder of Indie.VC, only 0.6%

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Revenue Term Sheet Founder Technical Review 60

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 14, 2014

Most entrepreneurs struggle with many startup Founders dilemmas in building their business, and these key dilemmas are probably the biggest source of pain and failure for the entrepreneur lifestyle. Don’t wait for the harsh reality of the demanding business world to start thinking about these tradeoffs. The founding team size dilemma.

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Hockey Stick Cofounder Entrepreneur Liquidity Event 268

Tim Keane

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

Growth generated by market demand and sales can be very complex.  Mike Markulla came with the first investments - as a cofounder -- because investors felt the company needed leadership that could attract talent to be able to grow and he brought in Scott. Growth generated by market demand and sales can be very complex.

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Technical Cofounder Wisconsin Cofounder IP 68

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2017

Most entrepreneurs struggle with many startup founders dilemmas in building their business, and these key dilemmas are probably the biggest source of pain and failure for the entrepreneur lifestyle. Don’t wait for the harsh reality of the demanding business world to start thinking about these tradeoffs. The founding team size dilemma.

Hockey Stick 144

Hockey Stick Cofounder Entrepreneur Liquidity Event 144

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 19, 2013

Most entrepreneurs struggle with many startup Founders dilemmas in building their business, and these key dilemmas are probably the biggest source of pain and failure for the entrepreneur lifestyle. Don’t wait for the harsh reality of the demanding business world to start thinking about these tradeoffs. The founding team size dilemma.

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Founder Hockey Stick Cofounder Liquidity Event 245

ReadWriteStart

JULY 12, 2023

CEO and co-founder of InvGate Ariel Gesto says the company will continue to expand this year. Gesto decided to scale InvGate after bootstrapping for the past 14 years. Companies that hope to compete successfully in global markets must be ready to adapt their strategies to meet the unique demands of each market they enter.

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United States Management Mexico Artificial Inteligence 121

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 2, 2016

I’m not suggesting that any startup needs to demand perfection, but I do recommend that all learn and follow common business practices from the beginning. Mark Zuckerberg can tell you a horror story about how his early informal breakup with a co-founder ultimately cost him a settlement later worth four billion dollars.

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Intellectual Property Due Diligence Non-Compete Startup 120

The Next Web

NOVEMBER 16, 2013

Adam Arbolino is the co-founder and CTO of DesignCrowd.com , a logo, web and graphic design marketplace. The site I co-founded, DesignCrowd.com, grew from a garage office to a thriving marketplace with 148,000 designers, and businesses who have created $12 million worth of jobs, in just a few years by applying these ideas.

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Feld Thoughts

JULY 15, 2014

The CEO and founder, Steve Olechowski , was co-founder / COO of FeedBurner, which Google acquired in 2007. In addition to bootstrapping his new company forever (since he’s a multi-time successful entrepreneur), Steve could easily raise an angel round any time he wanted to.

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Syndicate Syndication Cap Table Due Diligence 148

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

Values – who and what founders and customers hold dear – were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. We bootstrapped it.

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Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 149

Hearpreneur

NOVEMBER 10, 2020

As a bootstrapped company, fuelling your own growth can be challenging and comes with many lessons learned. This is exactly what Matt Buchanan and his co-founder have done while leading a technology company that offers local lead generation solutions, based in Austin, TX. Tell us your story. Why did you start your business?

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Bootstrapping North America Lead Generation Demand 71

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

Values – who and what founders and customers hold dear – were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. We bootstrapped it.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 120

Hearpreneur

NOVEMBER 10, 2020

As a bootstrapped company, fuelling your own growth can be challenging and comes with many lessons learned. This is exactly what Matt Buchanan and his co-founder have done while leading a technology company that offers local lead generation solutions, based in Austin, TX. Tell us your story. Why did you start your business?

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Bootstrapping North America Lead Generation Demand 62

Austin Startup

APRIL 14, 2017

The Bootstrapped VC Host: Arlan Hamilton , Founder and Managing Partner of Backstage Capital Backstage Capital is venture investment fund that backs underrepresented tech startup founders. that are led by women, POC, and LGBT founders. He also launched Cofound Ventures, Harlem’s first venture capital fund.

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Cofounder Hosting Bootstrapping Venture Capital 48

David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

(co-written with Jamie Finney, Founding Partner at Greater Colorado Venture Fund. This essay is part of a series on alternative VC: I: Revenue-Based Investing: a new option for founders who care about control. III: Why are Revenue-Based VCs investing in so many women and underrepresented founders?

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Equity Revenue Cofounder Colorado 78

Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

Capital Factory’s Saturday Startup Spotlight series continues this week with the Co-Founder and CEO of Homads : Vi Nguyen. I’m Vi Nguyen, one of the co-founders and CEO of Homads. We have two other founders that run the head of data and tech, and I run the business side. What challenges have you been facing lately?

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Startup Cofounder Elevator Pitch Bootstrapping 48

Up and Running

MAY 22, 2017

Listen to the advice of co-founders and other confidants. That’s what happened to Brickell Men’s Products co-founder Josh Meyer. If you need help validating the demand for your business idea, check out our article on demand validation. There are tons of resources to help you launch a bootstrapped business.

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Due Diligence eCommerce Cofounder Bootstrapping 113

The Next Web

OCTOBER 3, 2012

Andrew is the co-founder and CTO of Parse.ly , a technology startup that provides big data insights to the web’s best publishers. He wrote: When startups die, the official cause of death is always either running out of money or a critical founder bailing. Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Andrew Montalenti.

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Cofounder Technical Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 155

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. But you should beware of boards that are only the founders and their family and friends. These days revenue is the best source of capital.

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Software Review Startup Post-Money Valuation Technical Review 68

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 16, 2010

But you don't have any lords and masters to answer to and the pay out goes entirely to the founders and management team. The big enterprise software companies almost all bootstrapped their way to profitability before they got their first external investors (typically via an IPO). Photo by LotusHead. So VCs will need to invest.

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Software Startup Architecture Bootstrapping 127

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 26, 2011

Credit cards "just work" and peer to peer transactions just aren't big enough to bootstrap a network. They clearly have user interest, but these companies will have a limited window before later stage investors start demanding to see some proof that these companies can be sustainable over the long run at the kind of prices that were paid.

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Technology Valuation Community Restful 128

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 16, 2016

by Evan Varsamis, Founder/CEO at Gadget Flow Inc. Myself and my co-founders were just a bunch of young upstarts with a big idea. The capital earned in the agency was used to bootstrap the progression of the key business we wanted to launch. When you are bootstrapping cash flow is king. The Beginning.

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Greece United Kingdom Ukraine Philippines 100

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 25, 2011

— of someone of my age and experience walking in here and demanding such outrageous compensation, someone who, let’s be clear, is technically too young to even enter into a legal consulting agreement in the first place. “Yes&# if it means one of the co-founders can quit her day-job. So we think.

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Java Software Review Technical Review Salary 311

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 14, 2022

For the next entry in The Startup Magazine’s founder interview series , we are featuring Alejandro Russo, founder of Candela Mamajuana. Did you bootstrap the whole business or bring in outside investors? Alejandro: Initially, Candela Mamajuana was all bootstrapped between my mother and I. That’s for sure.

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Dominican Republic Founder Florida Bootstrapping 151

YoungUpstarts

MAY 8, 2014

Many protective business owners live by the mantra “It’s not personal; it’s business” because they assume that customers have unreasonable expectations, or that their demands will increase once you open the door of a relationship. In 1983 he cofounded Direct Mail Express (DME) in Daytona Beach, Florida, with his siblings Mike and Kathy.

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Technical Review Entrepreneur Florida Cofounder 254

Hearpreneur

AUGUST 2, 2020

My co founder Jonathan Hill realised how important good food was due to his father passing away from eating poorly. Now, we have a well-calculated formula for launching businesses that are 100% bootstrapped with a very small amount of initial capital. In 2016, we founded Melt On Demand together, an on-demand massage company.

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Entrepreneur Technical Review South Korea United States 144

mashable.com

AUGUST 20, 2011

Startup life is all about bootstrapping, but you need a place to work, right? “There’s simply no budget for [an office], as I bootstrap the company,&# says Paul Molluzzo, founder of Baby Goes Mobile , a web app that lets parents create a private baby book they can view and update from their mobile phones.

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Cofounder San Francisco Social Media Startup 81

Austin Startup

MAY 21, 2017

I bootstrapped that business for 10 years before selling it. You may never be in a better position than you are today to find co-founders for a new company than you are as a student at UT Austin. It’s only going to get harder to turn away from all of the things tugging at you and demanding your time.

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Austin Non-disclosure Agreement Artificial Inteligence Software 54

Hearpreneur

JUNE 14, 2017

We’ve continued bootstrapping since then — today we are a $2.5 I’m Shelia Fitzgerald, owner and founder of EliteFitz, a destination inspired women’s boutique. We have an amazing co-parenting style that works for both of us, and we’re both happy. Thanks to Emily Reynolds, founder of R PR Firm ! #4

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Up and Running

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

Word of mouth is no substitute for market research, says Ben Price, co-founder of Hard Knocks Brewing, a small brewpub in its second year of operation. Co-founders Jamie Floyd and Nikos Ridge leased their startup system from a family running a German restaurant out of a former brewpub.

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Oregon Jordan SBA Cofounder 60

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. In later posts I’m going to get into more detail on specific topics like hiring, raising money, what types of ideas have the potential to get big, finding your founders, and the like.

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Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Hearpreneur

MARCH 25, 2020

Not trying to be a lone-wolf founder. Before we were cool enough to even know about Slack, my co-founder John and I started the company working on an iMessage thread. Staying up until late at nights to write is sometimes very challenging, besides a busy family life and a demanding job. 21-Getting accustomed.

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Entrepreneur Cofounder Restful Bootstrapping 111

Up and Running

MAY 15, 2019

Word of mouth is no substitute for market research , says Ben Price, co-founder of Hard Knocks Brewing, a small brewpub in its second year of operation. Co-founders Jamie Floyd and Nikos Ridge leased their startup system from a family running a German restaurant out of a former brewpub.

Oregon 24

Oregon Jordan Software Review Distribution 24

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 20, 2015

Bootstrapping your business. If you aren’t familiar with the term, bootstrapping, also known as “self-funding,” refers to the various methods entrepreneurs can use to fund their startups beyond funding sources like small business loans. Using a side business to bootstrap your startup. Let’s begin.

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Bootstrapping Startup Louisiana Cofounder 60

Hunter Walker

JUNE 26, 2015

For a founder, the first few million dollars you raise are likely to be the messiest in the history of your company. But for most it’s a lumpy mixture of bootstrapping, friends and family, hackathon prizes, angels, incubators/accelerators and venture capital which combine over a period of months or years.

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