Bootstrap your arse off

Feeling overloaded yet? Cheer up, there's worse to come.

Let’s talk about money for a minute – you don’t have enough and the odds are against someone else investing in you.

To be specific, unless you have a world beating new idea or a really solid business model in conventional business you are going to have a lot of trouble attracting funds.

Even worse, most investors won’t come in until you are essentially bankrupt. This is not from predatory lending instincts, but because they are betting on you to bring your idea to full maturity. There is almost nothing more motivating to an individual than to be deeply in debt and the only way out is to succeed. 

If you are sitting at the early stages of your startup you need to sell product as fast as you can. That is, what is the minimum set of features that you can sell? Spend the minimum you can to get that product up and for sale.

This all means that you will be spending whatever money you can get your hands on. Re-mortgage your house, use your credit card, spend your savings and then seek family and friends as investors. You need to back your own idea, and when it all looks too much go even further into debt. This is called bootstrapping – a short form of the phrase, ‘pulling yourself up by your bootstraps.’

It will hurt. You have made commitments to a lot of people who didn't have much money to spare when they invested in you. You are barely getting by in your own life – house payments will be hard some weeks and instant noodles will be about as fancy as you can get at times. However, this is all normal for the majority of businesses.

Coming out the other side to regular and growing revenue is wonderful, and marks the next stage on your journey.