Roundup of events for bootstrappers in July 2026. Online and in-person events are offered at $10.
Roundup of July 2026 Bootstrapper Events
We offer online events for bootstrappers including Bootstrappers Breakfast and Lean Culture. There are also in-person Bootstrapper Breakfast meetings in Las Vegas, San Francisco and Silicon Valley. These events are for “entrepreneurs who eat problems for breakfast.”®
We have ten events this month to help you move your business forward. Join us as your interests dictate and schedule permits. You can sign up here to get the monthly roundup of events for Bootstrappers
Are you an entrepreneur who’d like to share lessons learned? If you’ve a reached a milestone in your entrepreneurial journey and would like to share lessons learned, please contact Theresa Shafer (tshafer@skmurphy.com) to explore scheduling a short briefing at a Bootstrapper Breakfast or a talk at a Lean Culture event. You must have attended a Bootstrapper Breakfast or Lean Culture event to be considered.
Thurs Jul 2 8:00 am PDT Mastermind Open House https://www.meetup.com/skmurphymastermind/events/315230008
Who sees your blind spots first? Clients, customers or trusted peers? Learn how a group of trusted peers can give you an extra competitive advantage in your business. This is an open house meeting to get your questions answered about what’s involved in an SKMurphy Mastermind and meet others who are considering joining. See also “Masterminds Help Founders with Empathy, Feedback, and Follow-Through”
Fri Jul 3 9:00 am PDT Silicon Valley Bootstrappers Breakfast (In Person) Redwood City
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bootstrappers-breakfast-in-redwood-city-for-silicon-valley-founders-tickets-1963668317799
Fri Jul 10 9:00 am PDT San Francisco Bootstrappers Breakfast Startups at CityGroup Center (In Person)
https://www.meetup.com/bootstrappers-breakfast-san-francisco/events/315092330
Tues Jul 14 9:00 am PDT Vegas Bootstrappers Breakfast Roundtable (In Person) The Coffee Press
https://www.meetup.com/bootstrappers-breakfast-las-vegas-startups/events/315387721/
Weds Jul 15 11:00 am PDT / 1:00 pm CDT / 2:00 EDT Lean Culture: AI Changes the Nature of the Firm. It Also Changes the Nature of the Startup
https://www.meetup.com/lean-culture/events/314552456
Over the past twenty-five years, Bill Grosso has been the CEO of four separate software businesses (two venture-backed startups, two bootstrapped consulting businesses) and has been a C-level executive at four other companies. During that time, the cloud emerged, the idea of analytics and machine-learning at scale emerged, open-source software completely altered both the development and deployment landscapes. And now, of course, Generative AI is changing everything yet again.
In this talk, Bill will draw on his experiences over the past quarter century and talk about how startups have changed, how startup customers have changed, and how we build software has changed, leading into a discussion of the role of startups in the emerging business ecosystem.
Thurs Jul 16 8:30 am CDT Chicago Bootstrappers Breakfast (Online)
https://www.meetup.com/bootstrappers-breakfast-chicago/events/315209728
Fri Jul 17 9:00 am PDT Mtn View Bootstrappers Breakfast at Red Rock Coffee (In Person)
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/mountain-view-bootstrappers-breakfast-tickets-262928394907
Tues Jul 21 8:00 am PDT Silicon Valley Bootstrappers Breakfast (Online)
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/silicon-valley-bootstrappers-breakfast-online-tickets-488376135167
Fri Jul 31 9:00 am PDT Silicon Valley Bootstrappers Breakfast (Online)
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/silicon-valley-bootstrappers-breakfast-online-tickets-488376135167
Some key take-aways from Bootstrappers Breakfast conversations in June
- Entrepreneurs who are uncomfortable with business networking may find these posts helpful:
– Time to Market: Tips for Strategic Networking
– Networking in Silicon Valley 2023
– Five Insights from Devora Zack’s “Networking For People Who Hate Networking
– Ford Harding on Rules of Thumb for Networking
– Key Lessons From Priya Parker’s “The Art of Gathering” - A good question to ask when you are planning your product: what will customers stop doing and stop paying for if they switch to your product? This is your real competitor.
- Startups can be a long slog. One question to consider is what customers you want to serve. You will end up spending a lot of time with those folks, and if you don’t enjoy how they look at the world and how they think, then it can become a very long slog indeed. It’s happened more than once that an entrepreneur has come to a breakfast and said, “I’ve achieved some success working with X (for example lawyers, advertising agencies, engineers, etc..) and I’ve discovered I really don’t like working with X.” It’s better to figure that out sooner and pivot.
- We did a chalk talk on the “Three question test.” One thought experiment many entrepreneurs have found helpful is to imagine they have 100 prospects lined up outside their door. They can ask them three to six questions that have a yes, no, or number answer, that would enable them to sort these prospects by who is in the most pain and therefore most likely to pay for the product.
- Look for prospects who are already engaged in the key behavior or business process that your product supports. It’s easier to convince people to accelerate or improve upon what they are doing than to try something new.
- Fruit flies vs. elephants: look for customer problems where you can provide rapid feedback or strategies where you can see if they are working in a matter of days to a week or two. On the problem-solving side, you normally have at most 2 hours on a “normal problem” and no more than five working days on a complex problem to provide useful feedback.
Lightning Round Question for July 2026
What do you want to learn this summer?
Trademarks: “Bootstrapper Breakfast” and “Entrepreneurs Who Eat Problems For Breakfast” are registered trademarks of SKMurphy, Inc.
Image Credits: “Books-Literature-Knowledge” on Pixabay by Herman -130146 used with permission.
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