"Work from a founder’s home"<p>Works great unless you're married or have a significant other at home. Trust me on this, after a week of seeing your face constantly even the most beloved becomes the most revolting.<p>See also: <a href="http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home" rel="nofollow">http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home</a>
You got to extremes with budgeting for food but you spend up on hiring a design firm for your frontend?<p>Your priorities are out of order. Some of the most successful sites on the web had completely shit designs.<p>The Google guys didn't even know html.
<i>If the original title begins with a number or number + gratuitous adjective, we'd appreciate it if you'd crop it. E.g. translate "10 Ways To Do X" to "How To Do X," and "14 Amazing Ys" to "Ys." Exception: when the number is meaningful, e.g. "The 5 Platonic Solids."</i><p>— <a href="http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
Just for the authors' edification, Scriptlance is very "meh." I found the providers to usually be at least a tier below Elance, oDesk etc in terms of quality. $5 dollar-esque bids are the norm, which usually translates into that level of quality when it comes to code, imagery etc. But as with any freelance site, it's about the providers first & foremost. Pay close attention to the portfolios & ask detailed, focused questions before beginning any job.<p>Also watch out for North American middlemen that go out and farm your projects out to programmers in India, Bangladesh etc whose quality (or lack of quality) you may have no awareness of. Not that I haven't been burned in the past or anything...
"We also truly believe in spending on hiring the right talent, contractors or agencies (and paying them competitive rates along with rewarding them with bonuses)."<p>And yet you recommend crowdsourced design sites like 99designs.com?
A Rogers bill! You're missing out... Teksavvy is a rogers reseller that is cheaper with no caps... since you're in the GTA you may be able to save a couple bucks through them!<p>Good tips - I find that the heat of all the PCs/equipment isn't that bad, but why not opt for somewhere all-inclusive (a ton of condo's have this, since it seems you're in a condo building)<p>The ping pong desk is a cool idea, I'd want to make mandatory chill out times though where say every thursday at 5pm you have a ping pong tourney or something.
A solid alternative to working from an apartment is to find coworking spaces in your city. In Atlanta, myself and my cofounder work out of a place that has plenty of space, tables, printers, etc. and only costs $80/month/person. Also a great networking tool, as you meet other bootstrapping entrepreneurs!<p>Additionally, if your city has an entrepeneurship society or network of any kind, go for the food if nothing else - aside from meeting other entrepreneurship-minded people, nothing better than a free meal.
The bag of rice propping the door open brought a smile to my face. I can just imagine someone needing to cook some rice then realizing the quantity needed may tip the balance in favor of the door. A second of hesitation before the aha moment and finding a new door prop...till the next day when someone goes "Where the hell is the rice?"<p>ya.....I need to get back to work!
My favorite bootstrapping-startup-life-hack is to eat your own dogfood. I'm not talking about using your own software, I'm talking about eating actual dogfood. It saves a lot of money.