Bootstrapping is a good choice for any type of entrepreneur.

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Editor’s note: Entrepreneurship is endowed with a seductive aura, and when it comes to entrepreneurship, we tend to feel bloody. Start-ups, financing, high-intensity, fast-paced work, stress and risk are all intertwined. JotForm founder Aytekin Tank explores his own Bootstrapping entrepreneurship path in this article. It is also a business path different from risk financing support, and gives his own answers and suggestions on issues related to Bootstrapping startup. This article is divided into two parts, compiled from Medium, author Aytekin Tank, the original title “Bootstrapping Guide: How to Start a Business with No Money”.

Recommended reading: Booststrapping startup mode without financing and self-reliance (below)

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The two words of entrepreneurship may sound tempting, and advice on entrepreneurship often makes people feel bloody. Whether it’s a so-called celebrity quote or an interview, it will convey a message: As long as you follow your own ambitions, work 80 hours a week, and “go all out”, then the next Amazon or Airbnb creation It is you.

It is indeed possible. We all know that working hard can bring us unexpected results. But the advocacy of the universal entrepreneurial myth that “it will pay off if you try to be rewarded” may make the founder ready to move before he is ready. And many smart, ambitious people often feel heavy pressure when they quit their jobs and start their own business. They will start to work around the clock like a machine, sacrificing their health and happiness to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams.

For those founders who are struggling against fatigue and supported by protein energy bars, I want to share a different path with them – Bootstrapping (self-reliance, low-cost entrepreneurship). It is this road that allowed me to create JotForm in a highly competitive industry, knowing that even companies like Google are competing for our market share. But since 2006, our business has grown and is now able to serve 4.2 million users, with more than 130 employees, and the prerequisite for this is thatThere is no external fund that relies on a penny.

JotForm is by no means a myth of overnight fame. I don’t have my own private jet as a founder. However, I have made a career that I like, and at the same time live a free and colorful personal life.

Bootstrapping is a good choice for any type of entrepreneur. The following is my own thoughts on Bootstrapping, including my entrepreneurial experience and gains, you can also think about how to use Bootstrapping to achieve success in your own way.

Bootstrapping—small is big

Many founders believe that if they can get venture capital when they start a business, it is equivalent to having a prerequisite for success. If it can achieve record-breaking financing rounds and reach billions of dollars in valuations, it looks like this. But getting outside investment is by no means the only way to successfully run a business. More and more self-reliant founders are starting to start businesses with little or no external funding, so they don’t have to worry about financing a lot, don’t worry about their ranking in TechCrunch, in the early days. Don’t bother to create a personal brand on Instagram. They can focus on providing quality services to real customers who will support their ideas through paid purchases. They may not be as well known as those that are willing to spend money on public relations, but within each industry sector, there are many independent, self-sufficient, but lucrative start-ups.

For example, Ben Chestnut, co-founder and CEO of MailChimp, first started creating email newsletters for his design consulting clients, and he created a tool to simplify this cumbersome process and create a value. The $4.2 billion business has an annual income of $600 million. Todoist, the company that also achieves zero ventures, is a leader in the productivity market, with more than 10 million people and businesses using the tools, including Apple, Starbucks and Google. Founder Amir Salihefendic founded Todoist’s parent company Doist in 2007 and said “we are in a marathon, not a short-distance sprint.” Basecamp was founded in 2004, when its founder Jason Fried was on the web. Design companies need a project management tool to manage different web design projects. So they built an internal tool and started working with customers, which is the predecessor of Basecamp. Basecamp now has more than 30 cities and more than 2.2 million customers and employees.

theseIt’s just a few examples of companies that compete with VC-backed competitors and successfully recruit customers and achieve high-income companies. So what is the difference between them and those startups backed by VC? A key difference is that they can make their own decisions, decide when, where, and how to do it, and decide how to grow the company. Many founders are actually quietly creating their own business empire, they are more concerned about how to provide customers with quality products and services, rather than to sensationalism.

Surely, Bootstrapping is a self-reliant, entrepreneurial approach that doesn’t rely on external funding and is not for everyone. Not every company can achieve self-financing growth, and sometimes external financing is the right choice. We all need to find the right path for ourselves, but it is because of the existence of such a self-reliant and successful enterprise that we can’t help but start to question the current popular concept of relying on venture capital to start a business: “We really need to do Risk financing?”

Self-raising and external risk financing: pros and cons

Entrepreneurship is not easy. Whether you use your own money or pursue risk financing, there are risks and challenges, and you have to face many complicated problems and challenges. After reading too many reports on various record financing rounds, we will feel that it is very glamorous to get VC support, and even think that this is a necessary condition for entrepreneurial success. I believe that many of us can say some business cases that are successful through financing: Facebook, Google, WhatsApp, Alibaba, online rental platform Rent the Runway, Uber, etc., and so on. This is a success we can all see, but you have to know that at the same time, there are thousands of companies we can’t see that rely on risk financing, but they eventually fail. In this case, statistical data is the most objective reference.

According to Harvard University lecturer Shikhar Ghosh’s research, about 75% of start-ups in the US relying on venture capital to end down, which means they can’t return investors’ funds. Ghosh said that if we define failure as not getting the expected return on investment, then more than 95% of start-ups are a failure.

A start-up is somewhat like a bicycle and needs some speed to keep it upright. However, once the startup is supported by external funding, it is equivalent to opening a timer for itself. Or you can think like this, if VC support is the legendary hare, the self-reliant, self-funding bootstrapping is the turtle, which is slow and stable, but it will keep moving forward.

We all know that prematurely embarking on the path of expansion is the number one cause of the ultimate failure of start-ups. Eagerly founders oftenStart renting large office spaces, adopting the latest technology, conducting fancy public relations and marketing campaigns, and hiring a full set of staff before you are really ready or really in need, and this often drains their money. Sometimes investors will also give them pressure to reach these external indicators.

Compared to this, self-reliant companies will not face such pressure. They don’t have to cater to any timeline or show a hockey stick growth chart. They are free to set their own goals and freely make rules. The most important thing is that they can define what they want to achieve, even if this definition may change over time.

Obviously, bootstrapping doesn’t solve all the problems. If you want to run a business without external financial support, you must learn to swim, or you will sink to the bottom soon. You must be innovative and strategic, and having these qualities can make you a better entrepreneur. Take the bootstrapping method to conclude the business, there are three major advantages:

Nothing is too much, personally, personal growth and gain

No matter whether your original full-time job is a designer, product engineer, developer, or UX expert, as long as you become a self-reliant founder, it is very likely that you will have nothing to do with it. You may need to send a package, answer a call, write a social media post, and more. This is true, although spending valuable time can be frustrating for things outside of the profession, but then you will understand all aspects of the company’s operations. And in the future, when you should hire a formal staff to fill this position, you will also know exactly what kind of talent you are looking for and what problems you should avoid.

*Addition: At JotForm, we are slow to recruit and expand team members. We will only start recruiting once we have prepared the full salary for the first year of the position. This is a simple rule of thumb that you can refer to when deciding whether or not to start hiring, which helps us stay on track.

Important is “need”, not “want”

Speaking of the startup office, you may immediately see a classic picture in front of you: industrial decoration style space, high ceilings, exposed building beams, atmosphere, and bright, you can see at a glance that this is A company that “does a big thing”. It’s just that it’s obviously not a wise expense until you really need it.

Self-reliant entrepreneurs can make strategic choices that suit them, such as using open source software, upgrading later if necessary, or working from home, renting a workstation at a co-working location, and being responsible for public relations and accounting matters until Companies can afford to hireprofessional.

Keep lean to stay flexible “turning”

In the early stages of the startup, everything is still flexible and flexible. After you publish your product, collect customer feedback and make adjustments to meet real market needs. This is an advantage. Many entrepreneurs will pursue perfection, but in fact perfection is not only impossible, but it is also likely to put your company at risk. Startups should release their products as soon as possible, don’t ask for perfection, or even try to make it perfect. Hundreds of start-ups have embarked on the path to success through follow-up and adaptation:

  • Instagram was originally a location sign-in app called Burbn. After that, founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger found that their users used the most not the sign-in feature, but shared a lot of photos, so they only had Now on Instagram.

  • Slack was originally developed to support a game called Glitch, but then founder Stewart Butterfield quickly realized that the game failed, and this internal messaging app is their real opportunity.

  • YouTube started out as a dating site, and single users can upload videos to introduce themselves, but founders Jawed Karim, Chen Shijun, and Chad Hurley found the response to be flat, and later began supporting various types of video uploads.

If a startup is obsessed with launching the first version of the “perfect ultimate” at an early stage, if the customer gives feedback that does not meet their expectations, or if they are honest with them to share the features or services they want and need, They may want to argue with customers. It is precisely because of this that we say that maintaining lean and flexibility is a very important business advantage.

How to open a business path through bootstrapping

Before you start, you should do the following five basic things:

  • Do your daily work

  • Starting a sideline

  • Share what you have created

  • Seeking to solve the problem instead of just following your passion

  • Close to your product

University graduateAfter that, I worked as a programmer for five years at a media company in New York. This job has taught me a lot: I will observe how the instructors achieve their goals and how team members work together. I also saw the micro-management damage to employee enthusiasm. Most importantly, my idea of ​​creating a JotForm came from this.

Either the media that specializes in the content of start-ups or the entrepreneurial ideas spread by social media often lead the founders to start their own business blindly as long as they have ideas. This method is not completely impossible, but entrepreneurship is a difficult process, and many of the ideas and companies that are promising are due to this blindness. Instead of this, it is better to adopt the following five strategies to lay a solid foundation for the long-term success of entrepreneurship.

1. Do your own daily work

Submit a passionate resignation, and the vocal resignation of the current job does not seem like a wise entrepreneur. Most self-reliant entrepreneurs are exploring and testing entrepreneurship through the form of spare time in their spare time on the basis of doing their own work. Only when your sideline income can bring you long-term income, and then choose to quit the current stable salary will give you a sense of financial security. Things like SpaceX, Apple, Product Hunt, Trello, WeWork, Craigslist, and Twitter all started in this way.

Don’t underestimate what you can learn and get at the “9 to 5” job at any time. Don’t think of “9 to 5” as a mechanical, boring form of work. Improving your skills while gaining stable returns in a healthy, productive company can lay a good foundation for your future business.

2, launch a sideline

At Google, employees can spend 20% of their time working on new ideas or other creative projects. This 20% time policy is widely known in the tech world, but in fact we can apply this concept to our own work and life.

We can create our own entrepreneurial projects through the process of exploring the sideline business. The most important point is that the sideline can fully stimulate our creativity. In the absence of income target pressure, we can play, explore and learn as we please. This is a great way to gauge whether your sideline project can really make a difference in your imagination and whether it can really inspire outside interest.

Before, Spotify product designer Tobias van Schneider pointed out that in fact, the sideline project should be something that looks a bit stupid and silly. “The only reason why the sideline project is feasible is that people are here.Some projects can allow you to think simple, you can change your mind and you can fail. In other words, don’t treat them too seriously. When you think of it as something stupid and silly, you will find the fun with a “teasing” mentality, and you won’t set too many rules for it. You will enjoy different types of success as a result.

If we can devote our time and energy to things that excite us and inspire our creativity, we should never be embarrassed about it. Bravely follow your curiosity and see where it will take you.

3. Share what you have created

Even if you haven’t completed this “creation”, even if there isn’t a single character, you need to share your thoughts. Showcasing what you are doing to others is one of the strategies that helps us get the top 1000 users. Now, there are many different ways for us to share and don’t cost much. You can choose your favorite platform, which makes you feel comfortable or share it on a platform you use every day, from YouTube channels, Instagram accounts, podcasts and even blogs. A simple such sharing behavior can help you:

  • Before you start a startup or start trying to sell the products you create, you can develop an interactive audience (even if this audience is currently small).

  • Deep and optimize your thoughts. Explaining a concept to others is the quickest way to help you find invisible loopholes. Use this period of time before the product launch to get more opinions and fill your knowledge gap.

  • Create a solid performance record. Doing business is not just about pursuing financial transactions, it is based on trust. You show your products to people and let them participate in your entire entrepreneurial journey, and they will have a better understanding of you. They will feel that you have invested in them, they can see that you are always in their sight and provide them with valuable content. So after you officially start a business, they are likely to continue to follow your footsteps.

4. Seek to solve the problem instead of just following your passion

The facts may be contrary to the notion that is generally advocated today. The best start-ups are not driven by passion, they are solving problems. We created JotForm to eliminate a frictional problem that I experienced when I was working in a media company. In the late 1990s, building custom forms was a cumbersome and time consuming task, so we thought we couldSend a drag and drop tool that anyone can use. I know that people want this product because it solves a problem that bothers us every day.

Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham once said that the most successful business ideas have three common characteristics: this is what the founders want, what they can create on their own, and so on. Some people realize that this is worth doing.

Graham writes: “When it comes to entrepreneurial ideas, the description vocabulary you want to use shouldn’t be ‘thinking’, but should be ‘noticing’. At YC, we’re going to use this from the founder. The ideas derived from their own experiences are called ‘organic’ entrepreneurial ideas. The most successful start-ups almost always start with such ‘organic’ entrepreneurial ideas.”

You can ask yourself the following two questions:

  • What problems have you encountered in your life and work?

  • Do you have any dissatisfaction with the products, services and even yourself?

The birth of the protein bar RXBar comes from personal needs. Peter Rahal, co-founder and CEO of the company, wanted a delicious, simple protein bar that contained no chemicals or synthetic ingredients. So he developed a nutrition bar to meet the needs of the fitness crowd, the ancient diet (paleo diet) and his own needs. As Basecamp founders Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson wrote in their best-selling book, Come Again: More Simple and Effective Business Thinking (“Rework”): “The easiest and most direct way to create quality products or services. The way is to do what you want to use yourself.”

If you have a prototype in your mind, you must at least make sure that you have an eager customer now, rather than waiting for a moment in the future. “Who needs this product now?” If you can’t answer this question, then this may not be a viable entrepreneurial idea. The RXBar founder Rahal, which we mentioned just now, has been experimenting with different ingredients at the beginning, until the taste of the last taste makes them feel incredible. But he didn’t stop because of this. He also wanted to make sure that someone else would pay for the product, so he went through house-to-house testing, sales and eventually passed the threshold.

Finding the problem can provide a sensible solution, and entrepreneurial passion can only be a icing on the cake.

5. Near your product

It’s decisive to stick to the content you create. It sounds simple, after all, myselfWho will not use the product created? However, running a start-up company often faces many complicated tasks and coordinates all aspects of work. The founder may soon turn away from his original heart.

After the product or service is launched, it’s important to keep yourself close to the heart of the product or service. Use it, consume it, order it, and get to know the details. This kind of participation and usage will allow you to experience and feel from the perspective of the customer, so that you can find the first-hand problem.

In addition, if the product or service provided by the startup is itself solving the problem you have encountered before, then you will have more opportunities to further expand the solution. You can ask yourself these two questions:

  • What kind of service can this product provide for me?

  • How can existing solutions be more valuable to existing and potential customers?

There are almost no problems in life that can be solved once and for all. Start-ups must not stagnate, but need to continue to evolve and progress based on customer needs, culture and markets. And only if you continue to explore the problems and solutions, your business can be fresh and vibrant.

Recommended reading: Bootstrapping startup mode without financing and self-reliance (below)

Translator: aiko