A bootstrapper isnʼt a particular demographic or even a certain financial situation. Instead, itʼs a state of mind.

That is how Seth Godin described bootstrapping in his “The Bootstrapper Bible.”

As firms which are venture capital backed get so much media attention, it’s easy to miss the other 99% of businesses out there which made it and which built a sustainable business model by bootstrapping.

That’s because by definition firms that are looking for venture capital needs a continuous PR coverage to play the “look cool game” to ease the hand in the pocket of the venture capitalist’s next door.

Thus, it’s easy to forget of the army of entrepreneurs that from day one decides to go the other route and first build a viable business model, then and when they feel the time is right (if it ever is) take outside money to scale the business.

Let’s start from a simple definition of bootstrapping.

What is bootstrapping?

The general concept of Bootstrapping connects to “a self-starting process that is supposed to proceed without external input.” In business, Bootstrapping means financing the growth of the company from the available cash flows produced by a viable business model.

This means using customers as the primary source of cash to grow the business. The bootstrapping process is critical when building up a new company as it enables us to reach product/market fit without relying on external money, which might distract the founders from the customer development journey.

But are all businesses made for bootstrapping?

Not all businesses can bootstrap

It is essential to distinguish among companies that have very high barriers to entry and those that don’t.

Indeed, due to regulations, technological development, or capital requirements, in general, bootstrapping might become feasible or not.

If you’re building up a whole new technology in a whole new market, no matter how good you are, there will be no customers for years to come. That is because the development of that market requires that technology to becoming mature.

It also requires an ecosystem to develop. Therefore, in these cases, bootstrapping not only is not a good idea, but it’s not viable. In that scenario, you’ll need outside capital and substantial resources to keep going for years before seeing the first customer.

Instead, if you’re launching a business in an existing market, where other business models proved viable, bootstrapping is the way to go.

Thus, you want to first understand the playground you’re in, then understand the best way to go. Steve Blank identifies four main types of markets:

• Existing markets: usually well-defined with existing customers and well-known competitors. This is straightforward, and in this kind of market, there isn’t necessarily a dominant player or monopoly. 
• Re-segmented markets: when a market, for instance, is taken over by one or a few companies (monopoly or duopoly), re-segmentation is the way to go. In other words, you enter where other dominating businesses can’t address. In this way, you can distinguish your brand (think of the case in which you go to a niche market). We discussed several times how DuckDuckGo entered the search engine market quite late, and when Google was already a monopoly by targeting a specific niche, users’ who cared about privacy.
• Clone markets: this is about copying existing business models to transpose them either in other markets (think of how Baidu built its fortune in China due to the impossibility for Google to take off). Or taking a successful business model in a market and transpose it into an adjacent one. Think of the “uberization” of several industries.
• New markets: in this scenario, your solution is such a novelty that is very hard to identify a potential customer or competitor.

Now, if you find yourself to be in a new market, or you’re trying to clone an existing business model in a clone market, where regulations might make it capital intensive to enter, bootstrapping is not the way to go.

If you are in an existing market, or a re-segmented market, that is where the opportunity lies!

Let’s now dive into what bootstrapping means, what are its commandments, and why it makes sense.

The Bootstrapper’s commandments

In thebootstrappersworkshop.com Seth Godin sets the commandments for the bootstrapper.

He highlights the posture of a bootstrapper by:

1. Ship real work.
2. Do it now. Not later.
3. Serve clients that are eager to pay for what you do.
4. Resist the urge to do average stuff for average people.
5. Build and own an asset that’s difficult to reproduce.
6. Scale is not its own reward.
7. Charge a lot and be worth more than you charge.
8. Create boundaries for yourself about what you do (and don’t do).
9. Become ever more professional.

Those principles are fundamental to internalize, as bootstrapping is not easy, as you’re developing the business without outside resources. Thus, you need to be very good at understanding what your market, who is your niche is, and what customers in that niche want.

That’s because customers are your investors.

Customers are your investors

In a bootstrapping mode, you don’t have venture capitalists giving you a free ride to get clear about your business. Therefore, customers, purchasing what you make will be your best investors.

It is essential to highlight that also, other key partners will act as investors. Your suppliers are enabling you to extend credit terms. Or your employees understanding when you might not be able to pay on time their salaries before figuring it out.

Those are all key players that will make your business model viable.

The company’s vision is in your hands

Another thing to understand about bootstrapping is you won’t rely on someone giving you the vision for your business. You’ll need to have a clear vision and mission for where you want to go.

As you’re not taking outside money, you will be in control and in charge of your business, which requires a lot of focus.

Speed of execution

My secret weapon is knowing how to cut through bureaucracy. My size makes me faster and more nimble than any company could ever be.

Once again, Seth Godin makes a good point where he mentions that a bootstrapper needs to focus on being faster and more agile, and avoid at all bureaucracy or politics. Where the founder who took a substantial investment from venture capital might be in the position of having to show how she is putting that money in motion.

The bootstrapper doesn’t have anything to prove except that building a viable business model, for its employees and customers.

Mastery and Passion

When you build a company, especially in a re-segmented market, you better be passionate and be willing to master that niche. Otherwise, it will be hard to gain a strong position where incumbents have already an established brand.

In short, you want to look at being the best in the world for that vertical, which requires a lot of mastery.

A little to lose but a lot to gain

As you bootstrap your way up. You’ll initially have very little to lose.

That’s because you don’t have an established business model. And where incumbents can’t tweak their business model, as they would risk killing their cash cow – think of the case of Google (now Alphabet) if it were to stop tracking users, it would lose its advertising business which makes up most of its revenues).

You can go all the way in. You can experiment with your business model and make money in unconventional ways.

Salesmanship

If you’re bootstrapping your way up, you need to understand you are the most important salesman of the company. Thus, you need to go in understanding your market, your customers, and why your solution makes sense to them.

You need to be able to communicate it. You need to talk to your community regularly and that how you enable to bootstrap.

In it for the long-term

A bootstrapper is in it for the long-term As we’ve seen, bootstrapping requires mastering and passion. And those don’t go along with short-term thinking.

Bootstrapping is about survival

A lot of this manifesto is about survival. A true bootstrapper worries about survival all the time. Why? Because if you fail, itʼs back to company cubicles, to work you do for someone else until you can get enough scratched together to try again.

Once again, Seth Godin highlights a critical point in “The Bootstrapper Bible,” there is no alternative to the failure of your business. That is why you need to be paranoid about survival.

Start from a proven business model

To be a successful bootstrapper, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. You can start from a proven business model and copy it. Copying a business model won’t get you far, so you’ll need to add your twist, or improve x times on that existing business model.

You can start by looking at how exiting companies organized their distribution, sales, and marketing, how they positioned themselves, to bootstrap your way up.

Differentiate from the incumbent

The fact that a company controls a market limits competition. However, usually, that same company won’t be able to satisfy the whole market. If you’re good at listening to those people who are not satisfied with the incumbent, you can build a business on top of that.

Thus, be careful at what opportunities an existing market hides. You might think that as a market is dominated by a large player, a monopolist, the least chance you have.

However, you’ll find out this is far from reality. The longer a company has been a monopolist, the more it might have imposed unfavorable conditions to its end customers, which might grow unsatisfied over time.

What the bootstrapper has that the big corporations don’t?

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