My new Forbes column Bootstrap Yourself highlights Silicon Valley’s hottest new trend, Bootstrapping. Indian entrepreneurs, you need to embrace this trend, given that the early stage venture capital industry doesn’t quite have its act together yet.
Great bootstrapping case studies I have covered are Sridhar Vembu, Frank Levinson and Jerry Rawls, Cree Lawson, and Beatrice Tarka. Sridhar, Frank and Jerry did it almost without any outside money, while Cree and Beatrice have done it with very small rounds of Angel funding. Aspiring entrepreneurs, you have much to learn from them.
Also note, in Frank and Jerry’s case, they used services to bootstrap, while Sridhar used a lower profile, but successful product which became a cashcow.
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Thanks for *your* forbes column 🙂 .. its good.
No offense, but i would like to differ.
If i open a Kirana Shop …after one year i will also start making some money. But, the idea is to get a going on a business *fast*. If i have to take money for that .. why should that be a problem ?
From the list you posted, how much time did these guys took to build the business ? I don’t think entrepreneur should spend that time, take money and grow faster.
I think nurturing a business idea and growing it like a baby .. where every day its a new personality and a poses new problem is a much more interesting problem than “should i take exclusivity of this baby ?”.
We burnt 40 lakhs to build an enterprise product, before we get funded. But this was a foolish step on our part.
May be because you have been there and done that .. three times in a row and you are pretty good at that now… but lately your posts have started to dry out the passion in a startup and make it all mechanical.
I suggest those who make a post on VentureWoods detail the post here rather than linking out to some article published/blogged. Makes it seem less like a traffic-diversion post! 🙂
Bootstrapping is best way to remove non-sense players. Bootstrapping drives your motivation reason in the company. It is always 10 times easy to work with big money and move over medium size mistakes but if you are bootstrapping then small mistakes pays more then 10% or 20% of your capital.
Virat
Vivek, I’d agree with you 🙂 I was going to say the same thing that “Bootstrapping” is the norm here – actually in everywhere except the valley.
Thanks for the interviews !
Just a couple of observations,
1. Bootstrapping is the norm in India, venture capital is the hot new trend.
2. In your interview with Mr Vembu of Zoho, you mention that Zoho was “bootstrapped” by revenues derived from other product lines. I would not call this bootstrapping – its an investment. If you already have a cash cow product, you are no longer a startup.