Bootstrapping is one of the best ways to establish a sales oriented startup. A startup that launches its products or services early. A startup that asks the user or the customer what he or she thinks of the product or the service.
Many startups lose themselves during the product development without having even talked to potential customers. Or even better without having talked to existing customers. Instead they develop and develop under the illusion that they could create the perfect product or the perfect service without even talking to the customer.
Bootstrapping, however, forces the founding team to think early about how to launch the product or the service while at the same time making profit. Because those who bootstrap want to use their own cash flow and expand.
At the end of the day every startup requires money. Money is the fuel of your business. If you bootstrap you get the money from your customers from the very start.
Bootstrapping has many advantages.
And one of the most important is that bootstrapping is the tool to create a sales oriented startup.A bootstrapping orientation will help you to think and act in sales oriented ways and not to lose yourself in details.
The bootstrapping mindset
If you bootstrap the following applies: functionality over beauty.
What you build has to be one thing in particular: it has to serve its purpose. In the case of sales oriented startups your bootstrapped startup has to be able to do one thing in particular - sell and keep the promise made to the customer.
If you raise money, you will have to think very early about making cash through first sales or through other ways.
And if you have to make cash really early, then you will have to think about how you design your minimum viable product and what your concrete offer to the customer is going to be. The three questions I ask myself when I consider a purchase are:
What is offered to me?
How much does it cost?
Where can I pay?
If you answer these questions relatively early for your takers then you have already taken the first step in the direction of sales orientation.
If you want to bootstrap your startup and do not want to wait forever for the first earnings then you should consider a business model where you can make your customers a corresponding offer pretty quickly:
"Those who bootstrap have to sell more quickly"
If you do not sell, you will run out of money sooner or later. The time from today to the day on which your startup runs out of money is your runway. With every day that goes by when your startup does not or you do not have earnings but costs you come closer to the runway bit by bit. There is a cliff at the end of the runway. If you have not taken off by then
So what can you do to be airborne by the end of the runway?
The answer is: sell!
For most of us selling is not innate. Convincing people straight away to purchase a product does not come naturally to most of us.
In the case of bootstrapping you have no choice but to look for customers from the very beginning. Bootstrapping forces you to leave your comfort zone.
Where do you think your prospective buyers might be?
Through what channels could you reach your target group / prospective buyers?
Who is already now in touch with your potential target group?
What is the best way to attract your target group?
What is the best way to communicate customer advantages that your product / service provides?
What makes your product unique?
Once you have created an offer it is your task to go into the world and to talk to your target group. Of course your offer does not always have to be a sales offer.
You could also accost your target group with the aim to get their names on the newsletter list. Then you could directly market your offer after you have established a relationship.
Bootstrapping after the first sale
Having concluded your first sale is going to be a real boost to your self-confidence. There is at least one person that likes my offer so much that he or she purchases the product.
The question now is how you are going to find a second and a third buyer.
When it comes to answering this question you have the advantage of already having at least one customer from whom you can learn. Now you have to find out for yourself through what strategies and through what channels you can get new orders over and over again. How can you keep selling to your existing customers and what else can you offer your existing customers in the medium-term, what could make their life easier?And you will probably invest a share of your first earnings in expansion. What part of marketing can be strengthened with the first earnings? How can you earn two more euros with the one euro you just earned?
Conclusion:
Even for startups for whom cash does not play a role at first because their pockets are full of money the bootstrapping concept can make sense.
Why? It enormously reduces the risk of just wasting the money and finding oneself without any at the end.
Bootstrapping focuses on selling and the fast testing of business ideas.
Instead of pottering about without any customer contact the focus is on customer interaction and business model validation through sales from the very start.
Bootstrapping does not work with every venture.
Nuclear power stations cannot be bootstrapped.
However, many ideas can be actualized through bootstrapping and the herewith connected sales orientation.
Bootstrapping is therefore no shortcoming or founding for the poor, but has an absolutely practical use and makes you and your startup better.