The Beauty of Bootstrapping: Doing It Anyway

• February 13th, 2009 /
•  Chris Schultz

My presentation for The Feast last Friday revolved around lessons I have learned in my 9 years as an entreprenuer and business owner. I’ve included the slides below, but wanted to add some notes, because many of the slides are not self explanatory.

• Impostor Syndrome – An entrepreneur’s crisis of self confidence. You’ve got to believe in yourself to make anyone else believe in you. So you just quit your job 2 weeks ago and started a company… that’s what you do now, go for it with confidence.
• Sprinklers & Golf – That’s where I started my career after college. From sprinkler salesman to business development of golf course management contracts. The only problem, I don’t like golf. You must do what you are passionate about.
• TRS80 & Vegas – What am I passionate about? I’ve loved computers since the days of BASIC on a Trash-80 and I love going to Vegas. My best friend Matt and I were in biz school and traveling back and forth to Vegas. So we decided to start a company that combined the things we love. Internet + Vegas = Internet-based Bachelor Party Planners
• Biz Cards – I have a biz card fetish. 1) we printed at Kinko’s with the logo design by Bill Gates (MS Word Clipart). 2) BachelorBlowOut got a little more professional 3) changed the name to Destination VIP because no-one takes you seriously with a name like BBO 4) Got aquired. Notice title change. Realized 8 months into it that 25% owner means youre not in charge any more, so 5) started Voodoo Ventures
• Charts - big changes over the last 10 years. Cost of starting a startup is falling to zero. Witness Y Combinator, TechStars, etc. Meaning, the number of startups is skyrocketing. Result? Best bet is to bootstrap until you have something “real”. 3 stages of a startup. 1) Ramen soup phase – you should be able to scrape together something and get a few customers to get yourself to 50k in rev. 2) Then the bootstrapping starts and you grow your company to 500k. 3) Growth capital is available beyond that because you have a real business. This is where I believe more capital will be entering the market.
• You’ve got a Website, Now What – You need traffic. Best source for traffic = Google. How to get free traffic from Google? Dan Finnery gave me my “The Graduate” moment in 2001 when he whispered in my ear “Search Engine Optimization“. Check your current website, if your page title says “Frontpage” you ain’t got it. Learn this and do it. It’s free and easy and powerful.
• Customer #1 – Relentless focus on getting in business. Get that first customer. Until someone writes a check, you aren’t in business. Mine was Dave Mullen who wrote us a check for $5000.
• Friction - Now that things are getting serious, you are going to get distracted from your business by all the other “stuff” you have to do. Legal stuff, IRS, opening bank accounts, permits, insurance, etc. You will figure this stuff out. Don’t pay a lot of money to do this, you can do this yourself. Find an attorney who will give you a break and help you grow with them. Don’t fall victim to paralysis by analysis. If you mess something up, someone will tell you. Just keep moving forward.
• Funding - Several options: 1) credit cards 2) rich uncle, friends & family 3) wife (mines not available) 4) cash flow. This is why cash flow is king. Focus on driving revenue. Cash flow = sustainability.
• How Do You Make Money? – figure it out. You don’t have the luxury of not focusing on it. Google Adsense ain’t it. And you’re not getting bought by Google. How do you add value, and what will people pay you for?
• Markets - I started my first company in Vegas in 2001. Vegas boomed, and so did we. A rising tide lifts all boats. New Orleans is seeing the same energy, and rumblings right now
• Be Local but Act Global – Don’t focus just on your city. Have a global strategy for your supply chain and collaboration. Also focus on global customers, not just local ones. But have a personality and leverage whats special about you being in New Orleans. Culture, music, social change.
• Be Disruptive – If someone is telling you to slow down, you’re doing something right. If you’re making people mad or nervous, thats a good thing. My first idea was GrooveOn.com and I called a bunch of record labels in LA and asked for their digital music rights. In 1999. They were mad. And scared. Understand?
• Launch Early and Often & Fail Fast – We built and launched Huckabuck.com, a meta search engine for $50,000. We did some crazy things like signing Rebirth Brass Band to a ringtone contract and flying a plane around Jazz Fest. Then we got a check for $2.42 for our first month revenue. Spending $25,000 to make $2.42 doesn’t compute so we sold it. Launch to sale in 9 months. Not a home run, but a single and it was fun.
• Failure - You learn a lot from failure. You have to erase fear of failure from your mind. Be fearless. You will fail, but you are not a failure. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and do it again.
• Ideas Are a Renewable Resource – They are also worthless unless acted upon. Keep following your dreams and making your ideas a reality.
• Give Without Expectation – This builds social capital. The old term for it is Karma.

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• categories: All, Entrepreneurship, Featured, New Orleans /
• tags: presentation, starups, thefeast