Three Essential Principles Of Bootstrapping Your Startup To Success

First, what is bootstrapping? 

Bootstrapping is to found and build a company from personal finances or from the operating revenues of the new company. 

Are you bootstrapping your startup, trying hard to grow your business, get your brand or your product off the ground? 

Gladly, you are not alone. There are tons of companies that was bootstrapped to success by the founders, such as TechCrunch, PlentyOfFish, mymuseli, chai-tec, GitHub, GoPro and Craigslist. 

Having found three companies prior, with the first one failed because of the mistakes I made, second one bootstrapped to profitability in three months, here I would like to share three essential principles/simple strategies that can help you bootstrap your startup, at least avoid the mistakes I made and get to where you need to go faster! 

1. Always validate before building

Remember, all ideas, before you test it, is assumptions. I wrote a blog here outlined three simple steps, almost for FREE to test the likelihood of success of your startup idea, give it a read, it might bring you pleasant surprises of a much needed cost-effective bootstrapping start. 

Once you validate your idea and have measurable evidence to justify the big investment of your personal finance into building your product, hiring for development, etc. Does this sound familiar: "Don't quit your day time job." :)

 "All decisions were objective until the first line of code was written. After that, all decisions were emotional.” 

- Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

2. Cash is king - Do things don't scale first

This principle is easy to understand. Without cash, your startup dies. Do the following to maximize your cash flows:

• Try different revenue streams until you find THE ONE. - Your eventual main revenue strength should usually be the dominant one, with 99% of your revenues coming from that channel. Before that, experiment with different ones. It's not untrue when people comparing entrepreneurship like dating. 
• Do things don't scale first. - As the founder of Y Combinator points out, usually the successful startups in early stages "Do things don't scale". That might mean consultant services first while you are developing your SaaS solutions. Remember, everything usually is manual first, automate later.    

3. Growth, growth, growth

Yes, we know profitability is the key of a business, especially a bootstrapping one. However, as a startup, growth is at least as important as profitability, if not more. 

Simple enough, if the startup's growth slows down, the chances of getting funded is slim; if the startup does not grow, it dies. 

So never sacrifice your profitability for growth, hustle, try new things, keep on going, do whatever you need, to get it going. Remember, bootstrapping is not easy, but at the end of the day, it is a matter of time just like marathan, which is what entrepreneurship really is. I will end this article with one of the favorite quotes gifted from one of our startup advisors, which has helped us a lot. 

Finally, to all of you entrepreneurs who are reading this. Keep on going, never give up and best of luck!  

“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.” - Confucius

Author: Luke Peng, founder and CEO of AnyaUp.

AnyaUp provides growth services for businesses, especially for startups. If you are looking for advice or any sort of assistance for your marketing or growth, drop us a message: [email protected].