I think bootstrapping might be impossible for non-programmers
Published in 2012, this chronicle by @ColinWright details the mechanics of building a profitable, self-funded business without venture backing.
Core Principles for Independent Builders:
Charging customers from day one acts as the ultimate filter for building software that solves genuine, high-urgency problems.
Keeping fixed overhead low and leveraging lean infrastructure allows founders to stay alive until market tailwinds kick in.
Small, repetitive improvements in customer retention and conversion rates yield massive returns over multi-year horizons.
Community Debate Themes:
The community focused on B2B customer acquisition channels, cold email vs SEO distribution, and balancing full-time employment with side-project development.
CATEGORY Bootstrapping & MRR →
HISTORICAL ERA Web 2.0 Genesis (2007–2013)
COMMUNITY SCORE 47 points
TOTAL DISCUSSIONS 23 comments
Non-programmer bootstrapper here. (Designer and Project Manager to be specific). I'd like to share my experiences. I don't code but I did do a lot of research. Like most of you guys I decided to 'scratch my own itch'. My design agency was having a hard time finding (local and affordable) models for commercial photo shoots and I know for a fact photographers are under a lot of financial pressure to lower prices. Also nobody wants to pay royalties, so I build http://royaltyfreemodels.com/ ↗
Did my own research, UI/UX (thanks Forrst.com !), wireframing and design. Used my network to find a freelance programmer and a good framerwork (CakePHP). Did NOT forget the legal part and paid a laywer (almost as expensive as the developer). Don't forget the lawyer and try to cut out almost 20% of their fee. The lawyer enjoyed working for a startup (less formal and he got to brainstorm along). He showed me legal ways I did not know of and stopped me from paining a big red bullseye on my back.
Buy http://37signals.com/rework ↗ and read it twice. So far I've applied for the founder institute (made it in, but was not able to actually follow the course due to a surprisingly large amount of very good students last fall and the fact my startup isn't 'mobile').
I've 'sold' some people and after focussing on models/people to join, I'm now focussing on photographers and design agency's. I want the site to become the 'ShutterStock of people'.
If you can't develop expect to be frustrated by the slow speed of reaction, adjusting and updating the site and it's bugs. Also, I work all day so I can only spend evenings and weekends. That sucks.
This article indirectly speaks to a larger issue:
Hackers need to become more well rounded and learn business skills, which will help them filter what to build, when, and why.
Right now hackers are too often like muscle heads, one thing overpowers the rest of their well-roundedness.
It's my belief that tech folks can learn how things work (including business, marketing, etc), far easier than business folks can learn tech things, like coding, etc. Why?
Figuring out how things could/do work is what we do all day in code. It's a super transferrable skill, maybe the most important one. There's no reason that it isn't being applied to improving ourselves in more ways than keyboard wizardry. Let's quit hiding behind the hacker talk.
I hope that we understand that "bootstrapping" is how the majority of small businesses get started, not just web startups.
The majority of people, period, suck at starting businesses for the same reason. Funding makes them suck often in different ways, as they usually spend it in less than optimal ways.. this parallels our experiences in the startup world.
The more we can relate to customers through marketing, sales, business skills, in addition to design and coding, the more well rounded one is in dealing with all situations, including the stuff you haven't dreamed of.
Welcome to the University of You. :)
The assumption that all intangible value is constrained to that which can be expressed through code is flawed. A better argument would be bootstrapping may be infeasible for start-ups producing tangible goods.
Tech start-ups, yes, and a diminutive definition of technology at that (you know what you don't need to know for, say, an interior design, drilling technology, or infrastructure start-up?). We all have a tendency to over-articulate our fields - it's in the structure of how normal science progresses [1]. I tend to do it with finance, coding, and engineering. Just as everyone need not know how to tranche out a capital structure or Fourier transform their cat, not every problem need be (nor can be) addressed through code.
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-ebook/dp/B007USH7J2/ref=tmm_kin_title_0?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2 ↗
From wikipedia:
"Bootstrapping in business means starting a business without external help or capital. Such startups fund the development of their company through internal cash flow and are cautious with their expenses.[11][12] Generally at the start of a venture, a small amount of money will be set aside for the bootstrap[13] process. Bootstrapping can also be a supplement for econometric models.[14]"
I looked it up to be sure, but bootstrapping as I know it has more to with business experience then programming. Things like knowing how to (cheaply) form a corporation (and the right kind too), set up (cheaply) any administrative infrastructure like accounting, control spending, ect.
Additionally, I am having trouble seeing how learning programming will help you with the above, or help you either A) find a technical co-founder or B) contract out developers to develop you product. I don't like the title and I don't think the author supported the title with his argument at all.
From the article: (Note: In this post I’m talking specifically about tech startups, and especially non-sales-driven tech startups)
More specifically: non-sales-driven tech startups with founders who don't have their own money to fund development by working with employee-programmers, directly employed or outsourced.
If you read that and thought "you can't employ that programmer, they have to be a cofounder"? Then add in the criteria that you're aiming at a "tech-heavy market", rather than building a webapp for a non-technical need.
(As an example: while I respect patio11 greatly, I suspect that the actual Bingo Card Creator webapp could have been developed by a good programmer from some decent sketches, at least in beta.)
So basically this article targets business people with little money and a "great startup idea!" that they can't build themselves. I fully believe there are a lot of those out there, but it's still a fairly narrow category...