The Bootstrappers´Bible

Following on my last post, I would like to give you some more hints on bootstrapping from The Bootstrappers´Bible written by Seth Godin.

If you try to steal the giant´s lunch, the giant is likely to eat you for lunch.

Without a business model, a company can get publicity, hire employees, and spend money – but it won´t make a profit.

Understanding the value chain of your business is a great first step in getting to the core of how you´re going to succeed.

The time to develop a multiple income source startegy is not when you run out of money. Then it will be too late.

Courting your big suppliers is a big part of being a successful bootstrapper. It gives you leverage.

Be up-front with your customers and learn how to deal with them in a professional way.

At the beginning … you might be tempted to be very choosy about which projects and which customers you take. Don´t do that!

You need a formal business reinvention process. Put it in your calendar.

You´ll discover that the time you spend managing people can have a huge impact on the way you run your business.

This book starts with a nice manifesto for all the bootstrappers and continues with real examples and a bunch of rules for all the areas of a business. What a great reading for upcoming Christmas! :P

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Bootstrapping in practise

One of the few things I am taking from ESADE is the concept of bootstrapping. As I was working on two entrepreneurial ideas, I swept into this magic world of no external funding and low costs. A start up, that is bootstrapping, is basically sustaining itself on the basis of positive cash flow. To have a better idea of how this can work in the online world, you can have a look on video from David Heinemeier Hansson (37 Signals, Ruby on Rails, book Rework – recomendable). In his speech, everything seems really simple as he puts it that way. And I think his way makes a lot of sense.

Recently I´ve been shown the difference between a novice and an experienced entrepreneur. Between those two approaches, try to find five diferences:

Novice entrepreneurs primarily look for:

• how novel the idea is
• extent to which the idea is based on new technology
• potential to change the industry
• superiority of the offering
• intuition and gut feel

Experienced entrepreneurs are in the search of:

• solving customer´s problems
• speed of revenue generation
• ability to generate positive cash-flow
• manageable risk
• others in the network whom to develop the venture with

You´ve got them? And now guess what … surprise, surprise … David is just trying to show all the other entrepreneurs that starting a business doesn´t mean you need to be a genius! His simple three step start up is:

1. Having a nice application/solving customers´ problem a little bit better then all the other guys / treating clients nicely
2. Asking money for that
3. Being profitable / becoming a million dolar company

There´s basically no need for taking the big waves, developing the next Facebook. It is all about simple ideas! Solving problems! And a positive cash flow …

Lazy Sunday morning

Everybody knows it (might be converted into lazy Monday/Tuesday/… morning). You get up, have loads of work ahead, but don´t really feel like starting. So you spend some time reading emails or you might check your favourite web pages or search for some interesting news. But …

• I don´t receive so many emails to cover with them all my unproductive mornings anymore.
• I am not into surfing through internet, because I like topics for whose reading I would need to switch on my brain.

So, usually I end up on Facebook. Photos + some personal news are quite a good deal for waking up. People like pictures. When children get a book, they first browse through all the pictures. So actually Photos + world news could be also an acceptable choice for Sunday mornings. And here emerges the solution -The Big Picture. Hot issues combined with quality photos. Just a perfect fit! You want to spend some high quality unproductive time? :-)

Leverage Facebook for your web or blog

Jon Bond:

Marketing in the future is like sex. Only the losers will have to pay for it.

Last week I have attended an online conference on the topic of “How to drive more traffic to your web or blog” mady by Jose Maria Gil. He hit the issue of many fragmented platforms which offer marketing of your company for free. No matter if you are a newcomer bootstrapping your costs or a well established company – if you want to connect with your customers, you need to get to those platforms. Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and blogs are going to be the essentials. The big paradox is having to spend less, but work more.

To share with you at least few insights from the conference, I would like to summarize some of the existing marketing opportunities that Facebook offers.

1. Starting from the landing page, this is the first touch point, that a company should take advantage of. Personalize it (Facebook allows you to use HTML), use the applications available, get inspired by others (check my article “Stop and shop in a one-stop-shop“, where I have been commenting on Facebook and included links for Starbucks and Coca Cola).
2. Coming to the wall page, get it properly linked to others social sites like Twitter or Facebook and iclude links to your web page to get better rating for your SEO and Google Adwords.
3. Moving to general information, don´t forget to mention all the links again.
4. Finishing with the events page, as for all the others, mention important links and use your key words while naming your events created.

One-stop vol. 2 – Multiprotocol Instant Messaging

Do you know what is a freeware proprietary multiprotocol instant messaging application?

Put in a simple way, it is a one-stop instant messaging integrating the best known IM accounts such as Google talk, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo, providing news feeds from Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin and supporting notifications from your e-mail account.

I find it highly useful in a sense that you don´t need to check all your accounts to find out if the person you want to talk to is connected somewhere, you don´t need to change your status in all IM accounts separately, you don´t need to enter your email to see if you have new messages and you don´t need to enter to Facebook to see what the news are.

I have tried Digsby and Trillian and personally prefer Digsby because it is simpler, doesn´t show offline contacts and is more user-friendly while managing your email and checking Facebook. The advantages of Trillian are in my opinion better design, integration of Skype and possibility of video conferences.

Want to have a simpler social life?

Pick a fight!

As the authors of Rework advise:

If you think a competitor sucks, say so.

You will differentiate yourself. You will attract followers, people who will agree with you. And you will have a great story to tell the customers.