It is tough to have these two mentalities at the same time:<p>> Your employees adopt your bootstrapped mentality and they, too, are careful of where they spend your money and try to be as resourceful as they can with limited resources<p>and<p>> Could I go and raise a few million bucks in a seed/series A round today? As a second-time founder, yes — I’ve said no to several investors already and have a strong network.<p>The biggest expense in almost any startup is employee salaries, so raising money almost certainly means higher salaries for employees. So you are basically saying: "I'm rich and have connections, but it is better for the business if we all are very lean". While it is true that being lean is probably better for the business, it only works if the employees buy into it. Maybe you are giving employees tons of equity and that causes them to buy in, but otherwise the whole thing seems pretty hollow.
As someone who is bootstrapping without a lot of personal capital to fuel operations, I have a hard time relating to this post.<p>I almost want to invent another category for bootstrapped startups that have access to large amounts of personal liquid assets.<p>Just think of the difference in strategic moves available to you if you have $1MM vs $10k to throw at a problem.<p>Having said that, I applaud his efforts to try things differently, and even agree with a lot of what is in there.
Can you really call a $7M personal investment "bootstrapping"? I've always associated that term with its more literal meaning, "pull yourself up by your bootstraps." Most people would happy retire on a small chunk of that.
After raising $125M at my last company, I'm going around talking about how I am bootstrapping this one, no doubt to raise attention and create interest and demand for the business -- it must, after all, be hot.<p>Whatevah.
This article is always worth reading when bootstrapping vs taking funding comes up:<p><a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html</a>
Not exactly the most honest title, BigCommerce was bootstrapped until $7m in revenue.<p>In theory, everybody bootstraps until they get funding, don't they?
He doesn't mention the amount of money he invested. If it's $5m, what does it matter if it came from investors or from him? He's just investing in his own company.<p>If the initial investment was $10k, then yes, it is impressive. I have an inkling that it's nowhere near that low, though.
I wrote something similar a while back <a href="http://iaindooley.com/post/79031771166/using-chess-to-illustrate-when-you-should-take" rel="nofollow">http://iaindooley.com/post/79031771166/using-chess-to-illust...</a> but I haven't bootstrapped a company to $7 mil :) good to see the same opinion voiced by someone who has!
Interesting choice of header image. I kept wondering when the author was going to talk about Soundcloud, but it never happened—turns out it's just a random photo of a startup office. (Looks like Soundcloud's old Berlin office? Not sure.)
Is this just an advertisement for PeopleSpark? Or while they're busy launching, the founder decided to sit back and spend his day writing click-bait articles for HN?<p>Not to mention how silly it is to say he's "bootstrapping" when he's sitting on millions of dollars. In most cases you'd be an idiot to not boot strap in that case.
I think the "studio" model can work, but not in the way that it's usually thought of. You can just throw ideas at the wall and see what sticks. You need at least one person who is passionate about the opportunity and is going to do whatever it takes to will that thing into life.
Bigcommerce looks interesting.<p>I have a client that uses Woocommerce, and to be honest it has a huge support requirement, because WordPress and all the plugins updates/security problems.<p>Can anyone recommend any competing services to Bigcommerce which I should review?
It seems like every time a serial entrepreneur or founder writes something about starting a business there's a surprisingly high number of people that think "How dare they fund their company with cash!"<p>Bootstraping is using your own personal assets to pull up your business yes?
What mitchell is saying makes little sense. he is already vastly wealthy and isn't under the gun to pay rent and bills. Aside from that this is a great article for a very wealthy second time founder to read.