In some cases a web startup can be bootstrapped for virtually $0 in the rare event all relevant skill-sets are available and willing to pitch in – sweat equity on steroids!
But let’s get real – how often does that happen, and how quickly do things get done when everyone is moonlighting? The typical scenario is high energy up front (“we’re all going to get rich”), which quickly tapers off and slows to a crawl – months go by, tempers flare, some do more than others and resent it. Dave just got a new job that requires more travel, and Cindy is buried after her promotion to VP … momentum is lost.
Unless someone is able to drive it relentlessly and still maintain harmony and positive energy, the above will descend into the delusional “we’ll pick this up later” when everyone’s “timing is better”. Uh-huh.
Forget Venture Capital funding, even getting any kind of Angel investment is REALLY difficult when you don’t have something/anything with legs. If you can successfully bootstrap within a number like $25K, and demonstrate a viable model, your fundability just increased by an order of magnitude.
Having bootstrapped 2 companies, one with a $60K SBA line of credit (started in 2000) and another with no funding in the first 2 years (started in 2005), these posts offer some thoughts on the key components to making this work effectively. I will take this as far as a launch (working version 1 released to web) – the thereafter is a different set of articles. The good news is that it has never been more attainable, from a technology and cost perspective, to rapidly bootstrap a web startup. Lets start by defining “Web Startup” to frame this discussion.
Web Startup: An organization formed to build a sophisticated online presence, requiring complex business rules and carefully crafted interactions, a dedicated database management system, complete control of the core technical components and architected for large scale and resilience.
What it isn’t: High-end blog with PHP code layered on. Blogging software is very cool these days and handles a lot – for our purposes, we need more than that. It is also possible to build some good stuff on top of Platform-as-a-Service offerings, such as SalesForce’s Force.com. All of the above should be researched as options – however, for this exercise, we have chosen to build our core platform, and maybe integrate with the likes of SalesForce.com if necessary.
Lets explore some of the challenges along the way.
Momentum
As in sports, momentum is HUGE. There are a minimum of “2 momentum phases” that need to be hit to get to a successful launch.
Generating the initial energy is easy enough – if not, stop now. The first surge will last about 2-3 months as the team settles into the detailed and focused work required to actually make this happen. At the end of the 2 months, there needs to be a second rush of excitement as a result of (1) completion of version 1 of the product, (2) release to the web and (3) active engagement of the target user base.
Getting that first real signup or sale can be exhilarating. I can virtually guarantee these words from a team member: “Wow, people actually want this” … in concert with checking Google Analytics every 5 minutes … “We got another one”!
The 2 month target is deliberate and starts when you engage the Glue Resource (defined in Part 2). This sharpens the focus, and gets something concrete in place ASAP.
Building the Product
If you’re not a Sr. web developer/architect, this can be as daunting as climbing Mount Everest, and the place where many mistakes are made. If you don’t have the “Glue Resource” to understand your business and direct the development team, success is still possible, but likely painful and expensive. This phase is where a well architected foundation must be laid to support future scaling, rapid evolution and maintenance, after go-live.
There is no way for the average business person, to know the guts of what it takes to build a strong technical foundation for their web application. So, what to do?
