Starting your Tech Biz: Bootstrapping [kwiqq]

Posted on | March 5, 2007 | View Comments

As a young entrepreneur I always enjoy talking to VCs and Business Angels. I’m always making contacts and learning from them.

But talk is not money! And won’t turn into money until you have something to ‘sell’.

I know there is a lot of information out there about this process but I thought I’d add my ideas to the mix. My angle is Bootstrapping from minimal cash (most probably from your part time work) and making it work for you.

1. Be Stingy: Obvious, but its easier said than done. From university and partying every other day I went to no partying and cooking at home (for the record, I use to get a takeaway everyday at uni).
2. Incentives your team: You have limited cash so there is no way you can pay your team. Give them other incentives, I used food. I learnt how to cook using online menus and emails from Mum then cooked for my team every so often. It really helps – if your team is happy they are bound to enjoy working with/for you.
3. Team: When I began I often thought it was fairly easy to do everything myself. Soon I realised that ain’t possible! You need experts in different fields. I like the way Mike Southern describes it in his book: Beermat Entrepreneur. He calls it Corner Stones. You need the Entrepreneur and 4 core people: Sales, Finance, Technical and Production. Logically, if you have these people to advice you – you should be alright as nearly all possible angles of the business are covered.
4. Friends are gold dust: While you have just jumped into this amazing experience of entrepreneurship you need a support group. I think friends are an incredibly powerful support group. They can be really cool advisors. I remembered when I released the 0.1th version of Kwiqq software I added all my friends to a forum (being a geek I developed it myself but you can use Yahoo, Google groups…). Then I developed tools piece by piece and asked them for advice. About 80% of them replied on a regular basis commenting on what I’d just developed. They loved it and I got free advice
5. Work like no tomorrow: For the last 1.5 years I’ve put in around 12-15 hours a day working, mostly coding and it’s not uncommon for entrepreneurs to spend that sort of time.
6. Learn, learn, learn: The best thing which happened to me was learning from courses, seminars and simply talking to people. I have some recommendations below. Network and talk about your product/service: Often entrepreneurs feel – my idea is top secret (I can’t share it) – honestly mate! All ideas have been thought of – unless you are cloning humans. If you are (give me a shout) – I would love to be involved
7. Share with people : Don’t be possessive about your business. As they say, a small piece of big pie is nicer than a big chunk of a tiny pie. So share it with people who you think can add value to your business (maybe to form your Corner Stones). A good chance to share your idea is to go to events like Saul Klein’s Open Coffee Club.

Help for young Entrepreneurs:

Grist

Meet people like: Patsie Sutcliffe from the Shell STEP scheme, Lorna Collins from NCGE, Saul Klein from Index Venture, Jonathan Markwell from Inuda, Mike Herd at the Sussex Innovation Centre

This has worked for me (Raj Anand) and my company Kwiqq. See what we do: See our team

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