
Bootstrapping Your Company - A practical guide by Greg Gianforte, founder of RightNow Technologies [MP3] - reitzensteinm
http://osc.gigavox.com/shows/detail1624.html
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Alex3917
See also The Bootstrapper's Bible by Seth Godin. Seth has a much better
explanation of the benefits of bootstrapping than anything else I've seen. The
eBook version is only three bucks on Amazon too.

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joshwa
don't know if this particular speech applies so much to consumer-facing
internet companies-- his first mantra is "sales comes first", and he tells the
story of how he sold a bunch of software before the product even existed.

Some of the other principles, though, such as not spending more than comes in,
first things first (keeping the cash flow coming), etc, are more universal.

the quiz at the end is funny, too.

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reitzensteinm
Yeah, it's probably not so applicable to consumer facing internet companies
since the approach really needs a business to buy into the idea (much more
willing to preorder, a single sale could fund the entire development).

Although maybe that depends on what you are creating. I could see something
like Hotmail or Skype being bootstrapped with this method, because those
services are useful to both individuals and businesses. Back then, email from
any PC with the internet or free international voice calls would have been
things that many businesses would have paid for (and still would, if there
weren't so many free alternatives now). Even Reddit got its NYT deal soon
after starting which pushed it into the black, did it not? (not rhetorical - I
don't know much about their history so tell me if I'm wrong!)

There is the problem of loss of focus though. If a company like Hotmail
started in '95, realised it could make millions selling their product to
companies and focused on that (sales, turnkey servers for easy installation),
they would probably only get a few years of that income at most before they
are dethroned by a company that just focused on making the best web based
email possible. So it would be a bit of a local maxmimum. Is this more
dangerous than the loss of focus of doing something totally
unhelpful/unrelated to the main product to bring in some cash (contracting,
searching for investors) while simultaneously working on the final product?
I'd like to know what everyone thinks.

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joshwa
in the future, submitters please post mp3 warning... though a domain indicator
would have worked in this case. pg?

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reitzensteinm
Sorry, I decided not to tag it [MP3] since it linked to the site not the file
directly, forgetting about the lack of a domain indicator. Harb suggested it
under the feature requests but it didn't really get any attention - I think an
upvote is in order.

http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=363

[edit: handily, though, there is an option to edit the title of a submission]

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joshwa
>[edit: handily, though, there is an option to edit the title of a submission]

well, there's one improvement over reddit...

