Too Many Would-Be Entrepreneurs Are Thinking About Their Ideas, Companies, and Investors All Wrong
As so often happens, the serendipitous intersection of one too many notes from the same chord in a short time have prompted me to post. In this case, I am seeing a lot of evidence that would-be entrepreneurs just don’t think about their ideas, their companies, or investors as they should. Case in point: I [...]
Charging for Your Product is About 2000 Times More Effective than Relying on Ad Revenue
I was reading Gabriel Weinberg’s piece on the depressing math behind consumer-facing apps. He’s talking about conversion rates for folks to actually use such apps and I got to thinking about the additional conversion rate of an ad-based revenue model since he refers to the Facebooks and Twitters of the world. Just for grins, I [...]
Is Silicon Valley Worth the Cost for Tech Startups and Bootstrappers?
There’s always some article or other in the blogosphere rambling on about why XYZ will be the next Silicon Valley–they’re quite popular. I just read an interesting piece that has some clues about the true costs of living here (yes, I live at least near SV and have worked most of my career in SV). [...]
No office, no boss, no boundaries: The Life of a Bootstrapper
I loved this CNN article that I found courtesy of Hacker News, except for the sketchy spin on loneliness. It captures some of the lifestyle I’d like to have, though I’m not there yet. I have been able to quit my day job, but I’m still low enough in six figures and busy enough with [...]
A Solo Bootstrapping Odyssey: 2012 Was The Year I Quit My Day Job
For those who like Bootstrapping Case Studies, here is mine. 2012 was the year I moved on from a Day Job and started doing my Bootstrapped Company CNCCookbook full-time. I’m not the first to do so, and certainly not the last, but I thought I’d provide a historical background and then some data on CNCCookbook in 2012 [...]
Converting Content-Audience Fit to Product Traction
Jason Lemkin has a new post out about gaining traction after your product ships. He says it’s hard, much harder than building the 1.0 product which was already hard, and he makes some concrete suggestions on how to go about gaining traction: – Finish hiring your core team. Presumably you’ve left the sales and marketing [...]
The Very First Thing a Founding Team Needs to Do: Achieve Content-Audience Fit
A lot of entrepreneurs, when faced with the question, “What’s the most important thing to do first?”, would answer, “Build a product.” Big mistake. The most important thing to do first is to find an audience. It may be that building a product is an integral part of growing your audience, but you’re not ready to [...]
The Series A Crunch: One More Reason to Bootstrap and Skip Venture Capital
I’ve talked a lot about bootstrapping on this blog–I am a total convert, and I’m enjoying every minute of bootstrapping my own company. There are many reasons for my enthusiasm. Investors these days are going to make you take most of the bootstrap journey before giving you a dime being one of the biggest. You’ve [...]
Gliffy: bootstrapped in San Francisco
It’s rumored that a Web entrepreneur only has to walk down the street in downtown San Francisco to attract VC funding these days. That’s probably an exaggeration, but even so, you can’t help but admire the grit of Gliffy’s co-founders, Chris Kohlhardt and Clint Dickson (pictured in their new office, below). They’ve chosen to bootstrap [...]
Gaining the Wisdom of Crowds in a Bootstrapped SaaS Company
When you’re bootstrapping a small company, sometimes it’s hard to do the things larger organizations take for granted, like making sure you’re listening well enough to your customers. On the other hand, you can take advantage of your nimble nature and the availability of some great technology to do some things that even a lot [...]
