Building a strong business with a sound foundation and value takes time and many bootstrapped companies have achieved this by providing amazing products or services. Eventually, they reach the point, through solid strategies and sustainable profit, where the company grows to have a powerful position within their industry.

Many of the successful companies that we see today had their humble beginnings as a bootstrapped enterprise. In this episode, I am going to tell you about some of these companies and I am sure that their case studies will encourage you to take the same path for your business

There are countless success stories of bootstrapped companies who have been doing business for decades. These are just some of the big names that you and I heard of. There are so many bootstrapped businesses who we don’t know about, the information about which is not available online, but they are earning in millions. Case study of each of these bootstrapped companies will give some lessons that are unique and useful for your journey.

Selling services or providing consultation at the initial stage of your business is an easier way of getting quick money. Understand that it is not your primary objective, but I am sure that there are some areas where you are really good at and you can think of providing consultation on those areas. A lot of businesses go through this route at the initial stage just to keep the bootstrapped startup going. Ultimately, maintaining steady cash flow in the first few months can be of great help for any bootstrapping business.

For bootstrappers the first few years are tough. Because you won’t be able to afford to hire experienced employees in all the major departments, a good amount of responsibility will lie on you and your co-founders. Also, all the employees are going to report to you at the beginning phase and in order to provide them with proper feedback, you have to have some knowledge in all the following core areas of business:

• Strategy - Planning, Organizing, Controlling, Leading

• Marketing - Promotion, Sales, Business Development

• Finance & Account Management

• Human Resources

• Operation and

• Technology & Engineering

Remember to only hire if and when needed. It is important to create a team but at the same time remember the old startup adage; hire slow, fire fast. Just like funding, hiring isn’t a matter of picking up the phone or posting a job proposal; it takes time to find the right fit. Another advantage of starting within a team of complementary skills is that hiring can be delayed until some higher level of validation is reached. Even for such teams, hiring begins the day the startup venture is initiated.

Follow these practices:

• Hire Only If You Need It

• Hire Smart + Experienced OR Hungry + Least Experienced

• Plan Well While Hiring

• Don’t Restrict To Only Local Hiring

• Save A Lot With Freelancer Hiring

• Say Goodbye Fast

Your brand is what the outside world thinks of you. That’s it. Although you can influence your brand through well-designed logos, hilarious ad campaigns, carefully crafted press releases, or super-friendly service, ultimately, your brand is what the outside world says it is. Brands are the most valuable assets many companies possess. But no one agrees on how much they are worth or why. Strong brands inspire loyalty, and we can’t always put our finger on exactly how they do it.

This lecture tells you why branding is important and how you can create great branding for your business on a shoestring budget.

If you’re self-funded then you must always know your most important financial metrics. You can only spend the money you made last month, as you don’t have any outside money to invest back in. You’ll quickly learn the importance of cash. Spending money that depends on revenue you generate is a lot different than spending someone else’s money. We have discussed some best practices that can help you save costs in a better way.

Prioritization sets boundaries around the amount of work, or concurrent work, that must be accomplished, thus it also helps to allow for quality producing tasks in the outcome of the work.

If you’re like most business people, you are often a little bit overwhelmed by all the tasks on your to-do list, and there are usually so many of them that you literally don’t know where to start. This can, in fact, be so demoralizing and frustrating that it can leave you unmotivated, with no idea about where to begin tackling the overall agenda. This is where prioritization comes in. It provides a certain clarity which is necessary before you can move forward, and by focusing in on what really matters, it provides you with a sense of direction and purpose.

A savvy founder knows that developing a positive company culture is top on the list of priorities. It's not so difficult in the startup phase, but creating a culture that will grow with you takes foresight and diligence. But someday you won't be a startup anymore and you must build a culture from the first day that will grow with you. Startups struggle if core values and company culture aren't built to grow with the business.

A customer-centric way of doing business is a way that provides a positive customer experience before and after the sale in order to drive repeat business, enhance customer loyalty and improve business growth. But, a customer-centric company is more than a company that offers good customer service.

Content marketing is important, not just because it works for building trust, generating leads, and cultivating customer loyalty, but because it has become the new normal from the consumer side.

It is, in itself, helping to evolve what customers expect from the brands they interact with. Neglecting it is way riskier than investing in it. Here’s how content marketing can help you at the bootstrapping stage of your business:

• By building trust through Content Marketing, you’re improving brand reputation and brand awareness

• Optimised content helps with organic search (SEO)

• Great content will generate lots of backlinks (and traffic)

• Content Marketing helps support through all stages of the Buyer’s Journey

• Give people a reason to keep on coming back to your website

• Content Marketing will help almost all your other digital marketing strategy efforts

Mentors are integral to founders' success because they can provide different opinions, a helpful community and valuable connections. Mentors have as much to gain from mentorship as their mentees. A strong mentorship network strengthens the global startup community. Having a business mentor can help you turn your good idea into a viable business proposition, and can make all the difference in getting your dreams off the ground.

I have discussed here in detail why and how you can find a mentor for your business.

A simple framework that can be immensely helpful for any business, mostly at the starting phase. This framework will help you create a better plan and execute with more chances of success.

We have discussed a real-world example of how the bootstrapping framework helped David to bootstrap his startup.

Bootstrapping a business is certainly not everyone’s strong suit and when it comes to startups, there’s always that high probability of not being able to succeed. However, you might be surprised to know that the majority of startups are funded through personal savings and credit, or in other words, are bootstrapped. There are a number of do’s and don’ts that we recommend entrepreneurs to follow, especially those who want to start their business with zero or low budget.

If you're relying on gaining the attention of an investor, you're probably pinning your hopes and dreams on the money they will provide. Is this a sign you're looking to do too much, too fast? Are you trying to go all-in on development when you can take things slower, use creativity and wise decisions to build a stable foundation, and only then look to growth via investors?

If your company can survive without an immediate influx of cash, ride that wave as long as you can. The longer you can survive without it, the more time you have to develop a winning formula, a winning product, something that can hit the market and succeed without that investment.

On the other hand, if you're certain your company will crumble without investment capital, you might need to take a look at where that money will go.

The best time to raise capital for a startup is when you have a clear idea of what you want to do and a clear idea of how much money you need to get to a milestone that will set a higher value for your company. In general its better to bootstrap and do friends and family as long as you can, because the more mature and successful you are the better deal you will get from angels or VCs.

There are a set of factors that need to be considered to decide whether you should look for funding or just continue bootstrapping. I see a lot of founders who are absolutely confused about it and they are chasing the wrong thing at the wrong time. Some are looking for funding when it’s still not the right time and some keep bootstrapping while they should be actively looking for raising capital.

In general, I advise to consider external funding when both the following conditions have been met:

1. You've established that a repeatable formula for getting paying customers is in hand. Real sales, not your uncle or cousin, and not 'users' who don't pay, either. In other words, customer traction is proven, and the funds you seek to raise are to scale-up the business.

2. You are concerned that continuing to grow your business without external capital is risky, due to imitation by others, possibly better-funded others. If you're doing something complicated and have a substantial lead, however, you may, as the wonderful Danish company Goviral did, be able to continue growing your business without ever taking venture capital.

I have discussed multiple internal factors that can help you analyze the right time and resources to raise capital.

Before you launch a business, you need to take a moment to define your ideas. The failure rate for startups is above 90% and much of this is due to inadequate business ideas. I’ve discussed the tools that can help you define your ideas.

If you are trying to start without additional finances, it might be a good idea to find a partner for your business venture. Here are the tools that can help you find your perfect business partner.

Startups are all about collaboration. But when you’re bootstrapping, you often encounter further problems with co-operation. You might not yet have an office and members of your team might even live in another city, which can quickly add costs. Let us see what tools can help us collaborate better.

Once you’ve refined your ideas, it’s of course time to start testing them. Ultimately, it’s only sensible to focus on spending more time and money on ideas that pass the consumer test. Here are some tools that can help you test your ideas better.

Once you are done validating your ideas, it’s time to start acting. If your startup is centred on a product, the development of it will be crucial, yet a costly step to take. But you shouldn’t go all out and spend all of your resources on product development. Here we have a few ideas on how to bootstrap building your idea.

Creating the right design and look for your business is an important part of branding. Taking advantage of already existing designs, which are free to use, can easily bootstrap branding. Sometimes even browsing these ideas can be enough to get your own unique idea and create a design without spending money on a creative designer.

The following tools and platforms offer plenty of free and cost-effective ways to add a design to your brand.

Bootstrapping marketing is among the easiest aspects of starting a business without extra financing. The Internet allows you to leverage social media for marketing purposes and market analysis can be cost-effective.

Financial management is an important part of bootstrapping your business. You need to ensure you make the most of your limited resources and different tools to track and analyze spending can help you do so.

The following tools are perfect for ensuring you know exactly where your money is going. Use the tracking tools also for analyzing your spending in terms of returns. You don’t want to be spending money on tools or people that aren’t providing good enough returns.

Congratulations on completing the Bootstrapping Your Startup course. I hope the course has provided you with a plethora of examples, strategies, case studies and some good resources to start or continue with your bootstrapping journey. If you need any more help, feel free to reach out to me directly and I will be happy to help (my email is shared with you in the resources section).