Bootstrapping baby!!
Is it possible to start up a business on less than $100? In a day and age when it seems that you only need a vision and a four hour work week to set up the next Facebook why does it seem that setting up a new business can be a dollar sucking vacuum with nothing but bills and bad luck?
A few years ago I started my first start-up and promptly spent around $30 000 (money that I borrowed against my house- ouch) on logo designs, printing, a nifty website and a stellar launch. It was awesome- and expensive. The business was a good one and people were willing to buy our products but I hadn't realised just how much I hated sales and pretty quickly went back to work to escape the monotony of the cold call. Just like that I lost $30 000 and my beautiful business cards went back into storage.
This time around I've learnt a thing or two from that first start up and I won't be making the same mistakes again. I've also had some great advice passed on to me from other entrepeneurs who are willing to share their failings to help me to shortcut the painful lessons that they had to learn.
Because I don't want to spend another $30 000 upfront I've been ruthless in finding ways to cut down on set up costs. I've decided that I'll only spend essential money if and when I need to. Rather than investing significantly in a beautifully designed website and stationary that no one will ever see if the project doesn't go ahead I've decided to use off-the-shelf products that will both look beautiful and reduce costs. I've also decided that there will not be a launch- instead of champagne and balloons we're going to focus with the hard task of getting on with it.
My bootstrapping efforts so far are paying off. Instead of paying thousands of dollars for custom designs I've used templates and off-the-shelf designs for a fraction of the cost. The tradeoff is in being prepared to use something that someone else *might* have, but for $29 900 this is a tradeoff that I'm happy to make.
My costs and savings so far are:
2010
Design $10 000 (custom logo)
Printing $10 000 (letterhead, business cards, envelopes, flyers)
Website $5000 (custom basic site)
Launch $5000 (awesome party)
2016
Design $Nil (delayed for now, using inbuilt features of templates which look awesome)
Printing $60 (awesome Moo business cards)
Website $75 (Premium WIX site using a standard template. I could have also used a free site with ads)
Launch $Nil (I'd rather have the money in my pocket)
It's important to me to share my learnings so that other entrepeneurs can learn from both my failures and successes. I'll be sharing these regularly through my blog so keep checking back for information about great products and services that help entrepeneurs set up great businesses without having to invest a lot of cash!
