Bootstrappers Breakfast is a group of like-minded founders. Everyone’s building, learning, and helping each other grow. Often we ask attendees to share one thing they learned from this morning’s bootstrapper’s breakfast. Here’s a couple … and please add your own!
“I was surprised by how quickly and precise the advisors and participants assessed my business and provided valuable insights and instructions on site. My business is quite limited in Japan, but it was amazing to meet mutual perceptions and enthusiasm of developing businesses with the participants of various backgrounds across the ocean. Thank you!” – Michelle Yuan
“Today the Bootstrapper community helped walk me around a good process and strategy for maintaining contact with my network and cultivating relationships. Also Sean rightfully pointed out to me that sometimes I oversimplify things when trying to give advise. Something simple and straightforward to me is actually overwhelming and complicated to someone else. That was actually very helpful feedback for me.” – Susie Sahim
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One thing I learned at BB last Friday was to de-risk things, especially with startups. Too late. ? It’s almost complete. Because I’m developing a dating app, it’s not guaranteed to make money, like anything of course, but it’s something I believe in and is unique enough that it’ll get attention…or so I hope. Anyways, I think it’s awesome that a group like this exists.
I learned about a new AI tool that I am going to check out. NotebookLM for audio overviews.
Starting a new business project is a daunting task. But following the bootstrapper model as structured by SKMurphy has been a breath of fresh air in the otherwise stodgy world of advice.
As a new entrepreneur in the public health sector, I came to the Redwood City monthly Bootstrapper meeting to find next step(s) for me:
• Conduct Interviews.
• Talk to potential prospects.
• Use group memberships and networking events.
• Create a website or blog to help gauge customer interest (avoid too much development initially).
• Assess desirability at a price point (free is not a price).
• Adjust beliefs based on new information (Bayesian updating).
• Build on past accomplishments (company’s origin story, solutions to past problems, prior case studies).
• If no interest is found after ~24 interviews while attempting to find the customer-need-solution trifecta, make significant adjustments to one or more hypotheses in the business plan.
Explore multiple hypotheses, changing one aspect of the business plan at a time (target customer vs target problem to solve).
The level of detail I got from Theresa and another guest helped me focus on getting out of my “developer” comfort zone. After that, I reviewed some book recommendations.
Nice reference: Working Capital: It Takes More Than Money by Sean K. Murphy, 2020