Slides and Audio From “How To Bootstrap” ASLCPA Mar-27-2013

Here are the slides and audio from a “How To Bootstrap Your Startup” presentation at an Emerging Business Group Best Practices Seminar at Abbott, Stringham, and Lynch.

Or download directly from “How To Bootstrap” [ASLCPA Mar-27-2013] (MP3)”

It was a great audience and a lively discussion about bootstrapping. I am grateful to Mark Sheffield, CPA, of ASL for the invitation to speak and to Pete Tormey, co-moderator of the  San Francisco Bootstrappers Breakfast, and Michal Domanski, moderator of the Warsaw Bootstrappers Breakfast,  for reviewing and suggesting improvements to the talk.

I also want to thank to Colette Gonsalves (@coletteaundrea) for her live tweets from the event:

• The key to bootstrapping: sweat equity, relationships, know how
• Bootstrappers focus on what they don’t know to find their problems
• Leverage expertise to focus on a niche, rather than the big market
• Evaluate an opportunity: what is the problem & what do you bring that can create value solving it
• Bootstrapping finance tip: live as cheaply as possible, delay gratification
• From day 1 as a bootstrapper you’re in sales
• Don’t keep giving a pitch that hasn’t worked. Learn why & change it
• Revenue is the only real proof of market
• Ask your target market who they’re using now cause you’ll have to differentiate from them
• Bootstrappers don’t go all in – they make small investments in solving focused needs they can win & build on them

After the event I did a Founder’s Pit Crew interview with Mark Sheffield. The ASL Emerging Business Group also has a great New Business Startup Guide available as a PDF.

Update Fri-Apr-5: Thanks to some sound editing work by Steve Wasiura I have an updated MP3 that cleans a low hum from the file. Steve has a blog post about the talk with his notes at “How to Bootstrap Your Startup” on his blog. He writes:

Now I understand your quote from the March 2013 roundup:

“Nothing clears up a case so much as stating it to another person.”
Arthur Conan Doyle

by turning my notes into a blog post, I understood the lessons better.