

GitHub founder tells you how to bootstrap a business - subelsky
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlHl6ZD6wlg

======
10ren
define: bootstrap _not taking VC (friends/family money is OK)_

why? _for control, to be the boss, to have freedom. A lot of pain to go
through_

save _money_

team _takes years, so start thinking about it now. Who's going to be on your
team? How are you going to finance this? eg. consult, sell your car_

market _Bootstrapping won't work for every kind of business. Best way is to
sell to business, can sell for a lot of money, so you only need a few sales to
reach profitability_

product _who pays money already? Sell to someone who's spending_

use it _yourself; be in your target audience_

beta _free, let everyone you know in, make it seem exclusive, but don't really
make it exclusive; then use this as your free research. This is how you find
out what are good ideas and what are the bad ideas_

what are PEOPLE doing? _It's one thing to sit around thinking about what would
work, but when you see what people are really doing, that's how you get a
really great product. eg. what are they clicking? It's different from what
they say they're going to do. Gives you great ideas about what is the product,
what defines the product._

what are YOU doing? _you're the user. would YOU pay for it?_

steal a business plan _copy competitors, charge less_

launch it _Means charging money. as soon as you can charge money, launch your
product. Be lean. NOT 1.0, every feature imaginable, pie-in-the-sky, perfect
app. But keep 1.0 in mind_

course correct _then start heading towards 1.0. You might not even hit it_

add features _launch, and then start adding features. Along the way, from
watching users, you can tell which ones are important and which one's aren't,
and prioritize your stuff that way. Use those ideas you already have for 1.0,
if you can roll them out incrementally, you'll make "super-fans", really
excited about the product, they want to help you, they want you to succeed_

flickr _photographers are referred to it by other users_

youtube _marketing without money: a youtube link to a funny video goes into
your brain. same as seeing a coke ad on a billboard. For some businesses you
can't just advertise with google words, you need to think of ways to use the
internet_

facebook _gets better the more of your friends are on it. Same with twitter
[network effect]; build something that gives people a reason to invite their
friends_

be cheap _don't buy stuff you can't actually afford until you can actually
afford it. Sounds simple but it's surprising how many people blow their money
before they even have the money. "PAYG and you won't have to go"_

be smart _use your brain at all times. don't do what I'm saying just because
I'm saying it, think about all the decisions and think of how it applies to
your business_

don't give up _change and adapt, always be adapting and correcting your
mistakes, because there's going to be a lot of mistakes_

 _[transcript ver 0.5]_

------
MicahWedemeyer
Damn that was good. Very similar to my own experiences.

I especially liked the point of not blowing money on ads and such. Getting ads
right is hard, and most times you will waste your ad money. Feel free to
dabble, but realize that your ROI will probably be dismal. Make sure to track
your ROI somehow, or you won't even know how badly you're doing.

~~~
barmstrong
Has anyone on HN had Adwords convert for their business yet (in real
measurable ROI)?

The best I've seen so far was like a 2 year payback period. Not very good.
It's gotten competitive enough that I'm rarely seeing Adwords be useful
anymore to a startup.

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
We've had a little success. It's fairly easy to track the conversion rate from
AdWords campaigns if you're also using Google Analytics.

Our ads convert to signups at about a 10% rate. At $0.16 CPC, that means we
pay $1.60 for each signup via Adwords. That's still too low for us to get a
reasonable return.

I've tried various things in order to bring up the conversion rate, since I
think 10% is low, but this is an area where I'm lost. I've tried making a
landing page, A/B testing the landing page, and some other tricks, but I'm out
of my area of expertise here. That's what I meant when I said that doing ads
is pretty damn hard.

But if I could just hit 20% conversion and stay there...then we'd be golden!

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Dude, a 10% conversion rate is pretty damn good. What startup are you talking
about? I'm guessing that a signup != paying customer, correct? I think ads for
free users is a very tough model. Now ads for software you're selling? That's
definitely not impossible (ask patio11).

~~~
MicahWedemeyer
We have a freemium model, and yes I'm saying 10% conversion to the free plan.
From there we try and convert them to premium.

------
pg
This is quite good advice, but most of it is not specific to bootstrapping.

------
pacoverdi
Slightly misleading, it should read "...tells you in 5 minutes how to
bootstrap a business" :)

Good talk anyway.

~~~
subelsky
I thought about putting the time limit in the title somehow but was looking to
highlight the key info, you're right though, that would have been a better
title

------
orblivion
It's an eye opener that he mentioned that you shouldn't bootstrap and rely on
advertising. I definitely want to maintain control over my project, but coming
up with unconventional revenue may prove to be a challenge. I'll have to think
a bit harder about it.

------
balu
Wow. Chris could be talking a little bit slower. Still it's a great talk. Some
of things are obvious but do not come to your mind but you recognize them only
after someone mentions it.

~~~
jroes
His talk is at Ignite RailsConf. Talks are limited to 5 minutes. Slides are
advanced every 15 seconds.

~~~
d_c
This Pecha Kucha format is really great!

~~~
jamesbritt
I saw some Pecha Kucha talks a month or two ago, and got the feeling that the
extra length, as compared to the Ignite format, didn't help.

It seemed odd that an extra 1 minute and 40 seconds would make any difference,
but Ignite talks seems to have more pep, perhaps because the slides advance 5
seconds faster.

But both formats are hard to do well. Too many presentations end up being a
list of items matched to Flickr images and Helvetica-rendered slogans or
quips.

------
rick_2047
I really liked how he pointed out the role of network marketing by examples
like flickr and Youtube. I never knew until he pointed out that "everytime I
send out a funny video on youtube, its an advertisement for youtube"

