

How to bootstrap a Startup with less than $10k. Meet Tipsandtrip. - stefanobernardi
http://www.thestartup.eu/2010/06/how-to-bootstrap-a-startup-with-less-than-10k-meet-tipsandtrip/

======
daveungerer
Wait a second... we'll have to find a new word for the concept currently known
as bootstrapping, because articles like these make the word completely
meaningless.

Bootstrapping means creating a _self-sustaining_ business. At a minimum, this
means you have revenue to cover your running costs. You can only say
"bootstrap with less than $10K" if that 10K gives your business enough revenue
to cover its running costs. Yet this is what one of the founders has to say in
another comment here on HN: _We will try first to build a community/traffic
and then will look for revenues._

I guess it's not the founders' fault that the article was written this way.
But once they've spent a lot of time and money on actually building their
community/traffic + the inevitable further development costs, and they start
making some revenue, we'll know how much it cost them to bootstrap the
business.

Some great tips for getting an MVP together though.

~~~
ahoyhere
I think this is part of the misconception that many Europeans have about "the
way startups work." Even if they read everything that's published, the "Hey,
this new thing just launched!" and "This Social Network for Dogs is a
STARTUP!" fluff outnumbers the "Yeah, we busted ass and charged real money"
meat 10:1.

Naturally, what's more common is what sticks in their minds.

As an American in Vienna, I find this kind of cargo-culting everywhere.

~~~
gametheory
sounds very much like the misconceptions of much of those in Silicon Valley

~~~
ahoyhere
Having spent enough time in both places I can tell you that it's much, much,
much worse here. In SV, you have actual businesses to counter-weight. Here,
you don't.

------
brianmwang
One of the things that always bothers me about the "How to build and launch a
product with <$X" articles is the fact that they almost always talk about the
costs of outsourcing design/development but almost never talk about the actual
costs of living for founders. You know what I'd love to see? Articles about
how a couple of scrappy founders cut their living costs to the bone, keep the
majority of development in-house (assuming there's a tech founder), and
outsource when needed. All of this while trying to get to launch/MVP before
the founders' savings run out or need to concentrate on consulting for a while
to pay the bills.

~~~
ahoyhere
Why wait for articles to be written? Why not do it yourself?

We built <http://letsfreckle.com> for "free" -- did all the work ourselves,
while consulting.

If you're really passionate, you'll find a way. Sure, it would have been nice
to have foregone the "while consulting" part, and done nothing but focus on
our product all day long... but nobody was handing us a free lunch. So we did
it, the way we could do it, without any particular hardship except being tired
and annoyed.

EDIT: fixed tense. Living in a non-English-speaking country is wreaking havoc
with my grammar.

~~~
brianmwang
Asking "why wait for articles" is like saying why use tutorials or guides for
anything at all? Why not just learn it all by doing it yourself? Besides, I
think there's a bit of a strawman here. I'm not saying I'd like to avoid
consulting to pay the bills.

There is a lot of value in learning from other people's experiences. Spencer
Fry has a fantastic article on the topic of bootstrapping in
general(<http://spencerfry.com/how-to-bootstrap>) but I'd really love to see
somebody get down to the nitty gritty financial details of dollars in vs.
dollars out - the holy crap, how are we going to pay rent in 2 months? stuff -
in the stages of a startup that hasn't yet reached ramen profitability.

~~~
ahoyhere
I'm not saying that "reading articles" and "doing it yourself" are opposed at
all. I read a ridiculous amount about other people's experiences... including
old business books, 10, 15, 50 years old, because the principles are still the
same, and their experiences are still valid.

But, when it comes down to it... how do you handle a startup before it's
profitable? Simple: the same way you'd handle unemployment, a sabbatical,
taking time off to take care of a baby, or whatever else you'd want to do that
would drastically limit (or entirely eliminate) your income.

You create a budget, you decide how long you plan to live without income, you
figure out a way to come up with the product of Your Budget x Months Without
Income.

Information and advice on budgeting for _any_ type of time-without-income will
do the trick for you, if you need more guidance. Startups aren't special.

What good would it help you to know how much my rent is?

------
fabiodebe
Great example of what Guy Kawasaki (and many others to be fair) have been
preaching for quite some time now. If you have a web-based idea there's really
no excuse not to give it a shot. Related to this great post I also suggest 1)
the StartupTools wiki (started by the awesome guys at Songkick)
<http://startuptools.pbwiki.com/> and 2) a post I read last night about how to
hire a programmer to make your idea happen (<http://sivers.org/how2hire>).

I agree that this app is going to face fierce competition from well funded
companies, but the accomplishment so far is great so congrats and best of
luck!

~~~
stefanobernardi
Derek's post is one of the best to date about hiring programmers for short
projects or outsourcing purposes. I still believe the best way to hire tech
talent is to develop relationships as you'll have to trust the guy with your
product and IP. Meet people at ruby-python-whatever user groups, find people
you could comfortably live with and then try to work together on something.

------
pclark
since when is the milestone for bootstrapping "launch"? I thought it was
always profitability?

------
nroach
Great job of getting to MVP on the cheap! But it seems like a budget of $10K
or so would only work for relatively simple apps. Doing something like
Dropbox, 280Atlas, or FlightCaster (probably) would take significantly more
money.

Any suggestions for how you'd proceed if you knew up front that you were
facing a much longer development cycle?

~~~
stefanobernardi
I'm not the founder, but IMHO such a project can not be developed on your
spare time. I guess the process that Marco used can be replicated for simple
freemium saas web apps and mobile applications.

280North and Dropbox are developing brand new and break-trough technology;
they need a full team of experienced hackers, loads of money and a grand
vision to realize that.

Of course the payoff is different..

~~~
saikat
280North at least develops all their technology in-house (and it's only 3
hackers). I bet most of their costs are living expenses for the founders.

------
ahk
Newbie question: the thing that always puzzles me is where these folks get
their data from (in this case the list of restaurants with details). Anybody
know how one can go about getting their hands on stuff like that? Is it all
available for free on some site I just haven't heard of yet?

------
magno
@fabio, yes, exactly what we did. We gave it a shot and wanted also to test
the many different services available to crowdsource workforce.

------
magno
Here to answer any question you have on tipsandtrip :)

~~~
bond
How do you make money? What's the business model?

~~~
magno
We will try first to build a community/traffic and then will look for
revenues. Revenues will be adv based (display, affiliation with travel sites).

------
kasted
so, how does this free app plan to make profit?

