Q: Should I Pre-Sell My Product?
Bootstrappers can be tempted to pre-sell their product, accepting payment before it’s complete. This can work but it often leads to tears. There are more effective options
Startup Advice Column
Time to Market S01E11 – Mastering Product Demos
Sean Murphy and Etienne Garbugli offer tips for entrepreneurs to master effective product demos.
How Founders Should Should Manage Startup Runway
Using 14 Ways B2B Entrepreneurs Can Extend Their Startup Runway to Go the Distance as a point of departure, Etienne Garbugli and Sean Murphy offer practical advice to entrepreneurs on how to manage startup runway.
What is Social Capital?
In his book “Working Capital Vol 1: It Takes More Than Money,” Sean Murphy defines social capital as the set of business relationships established with customers, partners, suppliers, and prospects. What is Social Capital? In an excerpt from Sean Murphy’s book “Working Capital Vol 1- It Takes More Than Money”, he defines social capital as …
Q: Can you recommend an accountant for business taxes?
Need an accountant for business taxes? Here are accountants recommended by Bootstrappers Breakfast members for startups and small businesses.
Q: How Does a First Time Founder Learn Sales?
You learn sales by doing sales: as a founder you must sell. Sales is a conversation, marketing is a broadcast. Marketing gets the phone to ring, sales takes the call and closes the deal.
Q: How Can I Manage the Stress of a Startup?
Tips to cut the stress of a startup: plan for learning, take time to recharge, join a peer support group, don’t compare yourself to others.
Q: I need an attorney who works with startups who don’t have a ton of cash
If you need an attorney because you want to initiate a lawsuit, please consider the opportunity cost very carefully before proceeding. The time to hire an attorney is before you sign an agreement, not after.
Q: What Makes a Product Attract Early Adopters?
The following is an edited version of a recent online conversation I had with a team of bootstrappers about how to make their product attract early adopters.
Q: Free Advice and Doing Business With Friends
Doing business with friends presents a number of challenges for entrepreneurs, as does setting limits on asking for “free advice” to know when to pay.
Q: Help! I Can Only Find Laggards in My Target Customer Segment
Entrepreneurs are often quick to characterize prospects who don’t see the benefits of their new shiny technology as laggards. Sometimes that’s the case, but often the product presentation does not present benefits that are either relevant or compelling. Laggards get a lot of bad press in the startup community, but their reasons not to change …
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Q: Kissing Frogs
Finding the right customers is not just a matter of kissing frogs until one turns into a prince, but a methodical search guided by an experimentation perspective where your selection criteria are continually refined and re-evaluated.
Q: How Do I Plan for Pivots or Even Shutting Down My Startup?
It’s useful to explore several paths in parallel and have a default list of pivots ready of your first few efforts don’t bear fruit.
Q: We Have Grown From One Project To Many Projects, How To Manage?
Three keys to making the transition from a one project startup to scaling up with many projects: keep a list of all projects, finished, active, unstarted and contemplated; maintain a status page that is the single source of truth for where the project it; conduct, document, and act on post-project assessment findings.
Q: Help I Feel Stuck in Low Gear
It’s not uncommon for an entrepreneur to feel stuck in low gear, falling behind both the competition and their own plans for progress. Here are some suggestions for how to keep calm and carry on.
Q: How to Explore an MVP For Knowledge Worker Productivity
Applications that improve knowledge worker productivity have to satisfy “prepared users” not “casual users” and are especially challenge to do customer discovery and development for. With his permission, I have included William Pietri (LinkedIn williampietri) answer to a real question from an early stage entrepreneur because I found it incredibly insightful. I have known William …
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Q: Google Thinks Our Name Is a Typo and Suggests a Competitor
When someone on your team says, “Google Thinks Our Name Is a Typo” you are at a disadvantage. Even worse if it suggests a competitor as the correct spelling it makes it look like you are typosquatting. Unless you have a strong reason for doing so it’s probably not a good idea.
Q: Is a Focus on Inefficiencies a Good Way to Find an Underserved Market?
A focus on inefficiencies is a good method to find a underserved market where you can bootstrap you way to viability. Here is a list of several others.
Q: Should I Be an Entrepreneur?
How do you answer someone who asks “Should I be an entrepreneur?” We ask, “Are you committed to self-improvement and to providing value?”
Q: How Do I Make Sure I Understand The Customer’s Problem and Present a Vision of a Solution?
Customer development–discovery driven sales–requires that you first understand the customer’s problem then present a vision of a solution. If that is acceptable you can proceed to a demonstration that provides technical proof of value.