

Bootstrapping for fun and profit (BarcampNYC4) - aditya
http://aditya.sublucid.com/2009/05/31/bootstrapping-for-fun-and-profit-barcampnyc4/

======
swombat
From slide 6, "Why should I not do it?"

 _You should not do it if... you can't focus if everything else is falling
apart_

I have to say, this has probably been one of the most essential skills for me.
There is an incredible amount of crazy shit going on in any real start-up,
stuff that threatens the very existence of the start-up, on a pretty regular
basis. "The world could end tomorrow" seems almost like the standard situation
for most of the early life of the start-up. If you can't get stuff done in
those conditions, you're pretty much toast right from the start.

I wonder what other skill correlates with this... I've always had an
(un)healthy ability to ignore people around me and focus on whatever it is I'm
doing (whether it's working, reading, playing computer games, etc). That
ability also applies to meta-distractions... I can still throw myself into my
work even when I don't know if that work will still have any meaning the next
day, or when something really disruptive has just happened in my personal
life, or when I'm sitting under a large cloud of uncertainty about my future.
Sometimes that might give the impression that I don't care about what's
happening around me, but I do - it's just that I can put it aside and focus on
the task at hand...

From the same slide:

 _You should not do it if... you have a low appetite for risk_

I would disagree with that, though. Appetite is the wrong word. I don't like
risk, I don't enjoy it, and I avoid it whenever possible. However, what I
think does help is to have a high _tolerance_ for risk. This is somewhat
related to the point above, of course. Tolerance and appetite are different,
though.

~~~
aditya
Sure, tolerance is probably a better word, but think back to when you were
starting woobius... weren't you just itching to take that risk no matter what
the consequences?

I've often wondered if you can acquire this quality that stops people from
committing to building a startup. This ability to delude yourself, to be
relentlessly resourceful, to "get shit done" without being too concerned with
whether it will work or not. Self-doubt is _really_ _really_ hard to get over.

~~~
swombat
_think back to when you were starting woobius... weren't you just itching to
take that risk no matter what the consequences?_

Absolutely not. I was very keen to start it, but very worried about all the
different risks involved, and what would be the best ways to reduce them.

In the end, I had to choose to tolerate some of those risks - but that's not
the same thing as saying that I had an "appetite" for them!...

------
ckinnan
He offers terrible advice telling people to not incorporate. He's stubborn
about it even when the audience challenges him.

You should incorporate at the very start for a number of reasons-- liability,
taxes, IP ownership, banking, hiring contractors. It doesn't cost but a few
hundred dollars.

~~~
aditya
Since the he in this case is me, I think it was nice to have the audience
challenge me, since I said at the beginning that I was not an expert - I mean,
this was _barcamp_ after all :-)

My problem with incorporation is not the cash, but the time you waste - trying
to figure out if you should be an LLC/C Corp/S Corp, doing the paperwork, and
then once incorporated dealing with taxes.

Here's some previous discssuion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=125368>

That being said, incorporation is something that is very case specific, and my
do not incorporate advice was based on my experiences, which is what the
presentation really was about.

I still don't think incorporating is a good idea for a bootstrapped product-
less startup, how's that for stubbornness? ;-)

