THE DREAM IN ACTION

Image by graves.ryan via FlickrI’ve just finished re-reading the ‘The Art of Bootstrapping‘ chapter in The Art of the Start and 3 main focuses stood out to me. I want to elaborate on why they stood out to me and why they are the most important underlying themes in this chapter. If you’ve not yet read the book I encourage you to.  I use it as a startup reference guide and a motivator because it truly does inspire a positive attitude for an entrepreneur when questioning your plan of action.

Get the job done.

The first step is just to execute. Without the constant focus on execution in your startup organization you will inevitably waste time and money. Being efficient with those two resources are the ultimate key to good bootstrapping! It is extremely rare that a startup succeeds because of the idea. However, it is common that a startup succeeds because of its ability to execute with a good team. Go out and get the job done with what you have, just do it. Swoosh.

Get the job done fast.

Remember to the two critical resources to bootstrapping? Time and Money. Both are critical in building a startups product and team. Money is the obvious because unless you raise capital you only have so much of it. And, time is critical because whether you think there is or not, someone else is out there trying to do the same thing. Finding creative ways to minimize your spend is the strategy part. Offer equity, or creative vacation schedules for lower salaries, in short, do what you have to do to last. These things are critical now that the economy is in the state it’s in.

Focus on functionality and ignore imperfections. If you create your product to get the job done and do what it is intended to do you will be able to find people to use it, and hopefully pay for it. It is absolutely ok to have your first customers paying or not to be your first production testers. Paying customers will absolutely give you feedback, it will come fast and heavy but it will be the feedback you need to then create and awesome product.

Invest in what got the job done.

The gist here is reward what worked. If your incentive structure is what got you great people continue with that. It will be worth giving up small shares of equity for the right people early on. These are the people that will be the foundation of growth for your startup.

Invest in great individuals. Right now everyone seems to be laying off as if its the cool thing to do. Well if your next hire brings more value to your organization than the $$ you would have saved by firing someone, then no need for layoffs. Find the people that will bring big value to your company. In this economy there are a lot of valuable people looking for jobs…see this as an opportunity!

Final Thought

I’ve said this a lot recently, but right now is a great time to startup. It’s an even better time to bootstrap. Follow Guy’s advice, start as a service if you have to, I am. Just get going and focus on executing quickly and getting the job done. Then reward what got the job done.