Bootstrapping startups invited to join other bootstrappers–startup CEO’s, CTO’s, and founders–for breakfast and discussion. We meet at different restaurants in Silicon Valley from 7:30-9AM
Bootstrappers Breakfast – Bootstrapping Startups Invited
Join other bootstrappers–startup CEO’s, CTO’s, and founders–for breakfast and discussion. We meet at different restaurants in Silicon Valley from 7:30-9AM, your only cost is your meal and a tip. Come compare notes on operational, development, and business issues with peers. If you are serious about your business and are open to discussing substantive issues and helping your peers, please join us.
Update Mar-3-2026
This was our first announcement on the SKMurphy Blog about the Bootstrappers Breakfast. We launched in October 2006 at Coco’s (now closed) in Sunnyvale with personal invites. I had been attending the morning breakfasts sponsored by the Institute for Management Consultants, and our roundtable discussion format initially tried to incorporate their best features: introductions, challenges, and earnest perspectives based on personal experience. Events for entrepreneurs collapsed after the dotcom crash in September 2001 as a “nuclear winter” descended on Silicon Valley, but then started to recover in 2003 and were in full swing by 2005 or so.
Starting in January 2006, I co-chaired the Marketing Special Interest Group at the Software Development Forum (the successor to the Software Entrepreneur Forum, which I had attended for years). Those meetings were standard panel and speaker formats, but by mid-2006, too much hype was returning, and I was tired of evening events for entrepreneurs held in bars and nightclubs.
I liked the early morning conversations; they seemed to attract more serious entrepreneurs who wanted to “eat problems for breakfast.” A phrase I copied from a poster I saw in the office manager’s cube at Silvar-Lisco, an EDA startup that was my second job out of college. There were fewer than 20 people when I joined, and the office manager did a little bit of everything, but primarily she provided what is often called “adult supervision.”
October of 2006 was an inflection point in our practice; we had started in August of 2003 with some early clients just trying to survive the aftereffects of the dotcom crash. We had a very basic website that we rebuilt and launched on WordPress that month, along with launching the Bootstrappers Breakfasts.
Related Blog Posts
- Welcome Entrepreneurs! First post on blog in October 2010
- Bootstrappers Breakfasts First Timers
- Odd Jobs With an Even Temper Every startup needs someone who can do “odd jobs” with an even temper. The value of small kindnesses, humor, and calmness are underestimated.