What Bootstrapping Feels Like!

The last few years have been a wild ride for entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurship is no longer an anomaly; it is now widely accepted and celebrated across the country! Thanks to platforms like Shark Tank and venture capital fund houses, entrepreneurship has been glorified and embraced by society.

As we continue on this journey, we felt it was important to share our experiences in building a sustainable business from scratch. Every entrepreneurial journey is unique, but there are a few common elements in all of them. One of these is raising funds.

Entrepreneurship itself is not new—it has evolved over centuries. However, venture capital is a relatively young industry, just 70 to 80 years old. This means that businesses were built and sustained long before venture capital existed.

In a recent conversation with my dad, who has been running a successful business for over 40 years, I asked, “Where did you raise funds when you started?” He was taken aback by the question but answered, “I convinced my first customer to prepay for the services I would deliver, and that became my capital. We made a profit from the first customer and reinvested it into the next one, and this continued.”

Me: "So, you basically bootstrapped, and in a way, your customer acted as your VC?"

Dad: "I guess, yeah!"

I am sure India is full of similar stories, and more! If you need inspiration to build a business, it’s not far away.

At one point in our startup journey, our goal briefly shifted toward raising funds rather than focusing on building the business. Then, we realised that building a strong business could solve the funding problem, but having venture capital wouldn’t necessarily solve the business-building problem.

To all fellow entrepreneurs: take a step back and think about why you want to start up. Is your focus on building a business or on just raising money? It’s absolutely difficult, just like most other things in starting up. The hardest part is to see people around you raise and you not being able to! Just put your head down and build! As YC says, “Build something that people want”. If you build it right, people pay and your customers become your VC. That’s what happened with us!

A shameless plugin to all engineers: We are building pantomax.co, our first product Wall of Defence helps engineering managers to ensure no bug is pushed to production ever again! Do check us out!