Bootstrapping on a Budget Turning 10k into Gold

Mind maps are a great way to visualise your new business. It will bring clarity if you can download your thinking onto a page. Write the word CUSTOMER in the middle of the page.?

It might sound like the beginning of a sitcom, but friendly coffee shops are where I do great work.

Imagine you have only $10,000 and a burning desire to build a Startup. Take the top 5 ideas marinating in your brain. Now, choose 2 words encapsulating the big problem and 2 words distilling an elegant solution, and for now, describe why you shortlisted these choices. Probably because at 3 am, you have been questioning your life choices, and these are the ones that won't let you sleep.

Now, add PAIN and SOLUTION to your page and join the dots.

Check out explodingtopics.com to see if this is trending, which might not necessarily demonstrate disruption but represents potential market interest.

Coffee and Commitment:

Drop $5 to your cafe owner. Buy the good stuff. Wifi and caffeine help you scribble down your master plans. Free rent and WIFI, make sure you buy another to say thank you.

Your Startup will take every ounce of energy, so you better be committed.

If you only had a year to live, which would you choose? You better be passionate about it, as you may well be giving up the next seven years of your life.

Start to test the market. Is it just you who thinks this is special, or do you have an ugly baby? Don’t panic.

Ok, your idea shows some promise, and you have validated it reasonably.

You have an idea, time to sharpen it up

You have decided upon the problem you want to solve. Consider filtering negative comments on Reddit. Spend some time lurking around on Reddit, where your potential customers hang out. Negative comments are gold mines for what customer pain points are. Creating a customer profile and segmenting your market is a good start. You are learning to say NO to everything that does not move your company forward. Personifying the customer helps bring their pain to a more precise level and ensures the solution you ultimately build is that magic bullet:

The goal is to put the right product in front of the right customer with the right message.

Now, it’s time to spend more

Incorporate a company. $600 for incorporation. Build a landing page on Godaddy.com. Establish three simple landing pages, choose some imagery, and write some excellent copy—$1500 for three.

Spend the time to learn these skills. You don’t want to rely on too many people until you have a basic understanding of leveraging technology. Practice, test, and learn more, always.

The cost of education here is $0, and there’s excellent content everywhere, including workshops, e-books, YouTube videos, and even the sound old library.

Run some ads on your landing pages.

Allocate FB or AdWords budget, test, test, test.

$3000. $1k per month for three months.

Keep refining

Clarify and distil your message eloquently, think Shakespeare quality. Spend another $10 for two coffees. Keep talking to your intelligent friends, mentors, or founders a few steps ahead of you. Keep asking for that tough love. Reach out; this is an invaluable process.

Identify the quintessence of the pain point you are attacking.

Don’t ask for feedback from your mum. Go to the most demanding, most honest audience possible. Is it good enough yet? Rinse and repeat. Feedback and tough love is your new friend.

Now buy your Mum flowers. $50 bucks should do it. You should.

Choose a call to action (survey, subscribe, mailing list). Build a ‘waitlist’.

The aim is to get 10,000 people on your email list.

Early adopters are great first customers, but they won't be enough.? You want mainstream customers, better still, to build a monopoly. That’s for a later post, but the goal is to test your way to Product Market Fit. Here, you are part politician, selling the dream. Seducing the mainstream requires more than fancy words. You need to build an exquisite product.

Start targeting your audience of 10,000 potential customers.

Time To Build

Create an MVP and charge for some basic features. Remember, as you go, don't be afraid to charge; free sounds great, but remember, you pay for what you get.?

Try Google Appsheets or Microsoft Power Apps, but many other low-code applications exist. This is where you learn that YouTube isn't just about cool cat videos. There is a veritable treasure chest here for getting started with these tools.

Feeling lucky, grab another coffee with a software engineer. A Technical Co-Founder is a Godsend. You have done your research, got some feedback, and launched, perhaps in a low-code environment. He or she just might like what you are doing and think your project is cool enough to hire you as a Co-Founder, so you rebuild in native software.

Now, you are looking for feedback from real users, what they are doing, where they spend their time, and incredibly constructive feedback. Lean on the best-in-class companies for how to design your user experience and user interface for what you will want down the track.?

Back to that Waitlist

It's time to ship version 2. Congratulations! And to let your avid fans on your waitlist know it's ready for them to subscribe, your pre-work has now yielded you some cash flow.

How else can you add more value to your customers?

Talk to your customers, buy them a coffee, and speak to as many as possible—$100 for more coffees. Stick to your vision and the problem you are solving. But gain perspective to be regarded as a real ‘insider’ who can faithfully explain the pain and proffer the ‘just right’ solution.

Discover at least one cost-effective distribution channel to reach your audience.

Total Cost - Under $10,000.

Time to Scale, Now

You have de-risked some key issues. Now, you can decide if capital raising is suitable for you.? However, you have multiplied your chances of raising money and increased your company's market value.

Congratulations. You have navigated the exhilarating ride of getting to an MVP and a better start to finding Product Market Fit. Having done the work, you are in a much better position to decide whether to audition some investors or keep Bootstrapping to glory.