Bootstrapped Founder #94: How to Kill Your Business
Dear founder,Most advice comes in the shape of telling you what to do to be successful. It's instructional, it shows the happy path, and as a reader, I resonate with that a lot. After all, I want to see how it's done right. I want to learn from the best. But that's not the only way to learn. After all, most advice is anecdotal, it often suffers from hindsight bias, and it's so selective that it may not apply to your entrepreneurial efforts at all. However, not all is lost. There is a story about Charlie Munger, who worked as a meteorologist for the US Airforce in World War II. His job was clearing pilots for takeoff and plot a course for their safe return, so he had to make sure his weather predictions would be on point. He was responsible for bringing his pilots home. Prefer listening over reading? Listen to this on my podcast. Instead of finding the best way to do that, Munger laid out all the ways in which he would fail at his task. He played through all of these scenarios to know what conditions would keep him from succeeding. For a founder, this is an equally useful exercise. What could you do to make sure your business will fail? Here are a few scenarios of questionable choices and why they are likely to backfire. (And just to make sure: the following advice is inverted. Don't try this at home.) Stupid Idea #1: Quit your Job ImmediatelyThe moment you have a business idea, quit your job! Why would you need a stable source of income while you experiment with your completely unvalidated idea? Throw caution to the wind and put all your eggs in one basket. Startups have a 100% survival rate, right? You can definitely survive a few weeks without revenue. Customers are super easy to find, and they'll pay you boatloads of money quickly anyway. So go ahead, quit your job, remove the safety net to play in the big leagues. I see way too many founders thinking along those lines. It's wonderful if you have ideas, but the idea is a minuscule part of building a sustainable business. The initial revenue of a business is zero, and it's incredibly hard to grow. It may take months or years for a bootstrapped business to become truly profitable. You will need a very long runway for that, and having a day job is a very smart choice. Moonlighting is how many successful projects started. They were successful because the founders had the time and opportunity to experiment without being on the brink of bankruptcy. Keep your job — or your consulting and freelancing clients — for as long as you can. Just make sure that you're legally allowed to run a side business. Stupid Idea #2: Pour your Life Savings into your Unvalidated ProjectAlright! So you kept your job. But that business idea, oh boy, is that ever awesome. You don't need to validate it. It makes perfect sense to all your founder friends — and even your parents! They're super supportive and would totally buy your product, even though they don't really understand. Wow, what a clear sign of future success. Time to throw your life savings into the project. Hey, let's buy a new laptop as well and then pre-purchase a few years' worth of AWS dedicated instances. It'll be a super scalable business, after all! Hold your horses. Every idea needs to be validated, no matter how promising it sounds. Particularly if it sounds like a clear winner, you'll need to do some research. Otherwise, why is no one doing the exact same thing already? Also, never ask friends and family to validate your business idea. As Rob Fitzpatrick points out in the Don't waste your hard-earned personal money. Only pay for what you need, and find cheap solutions to keep the lights on while you're experimenting with your business. Don't overcommit your funds. A side project is not a full business; you can pull back at any point. Falling prey to the
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Bootstrapped Founder #91: Say Thank You
Friday, July 2, 2021
The Bootstrapped Founder Logo Dear founder, I've had an amazing year so far. I launched Zero to Sold a year go to great success, and in May, I launched The Embedded Entrepreneur to even
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The Bootstrapped Founder Logo Dear founder, When founders do market research, they are well-advised to look for competition. But many entrepreneurs have a very limited understanding of what
Bootstrapped Founder #89: Selfish vs. Selfless: Self-Promotion in Communities
Friday, June 18, 2021
The Bootstrapped Founder Logo Dear founder, I used to think all self-promotion was wrong — at all times. Being raised in Germany, I developed a severe case of tall poppy syndrome — the phenomenon
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