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It is ten times the median savings an american family has [1] Once again I am not diminishing his accomplishments. I started my own company with the same amoun

It is ten times the median savings an american family has [1] Once again I am not diminishing his accomplishments. I started my own company with the same amount of money but never claimed to have "bootstrapped"it. We on HN live in a bubble that amazes me. I know first hand how much it costs to start a company and how hard it is to raise a 1M€ (I heard it is as hard as raising 10M$ in the valley, but never tried to raise in the US so take that with a grain of salt!). I also know it is much, much harder to get your first 1M€ of revenue. Like one of my business angel once told me "il nest de bon argent que celui du client": the only good kind of money is the customer's. [1]http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/12/heres-how-much-the-average-american-family-has-saved-for-retirement.html http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/12/heres-how-much-the-average-am...

jacquesm 10y ago
> It is ten times the median savings an american family has The median American family is not trying to start a business. Also: if you can't manage your own funds and save please don't start a company, it will most likely not work and create misery for yourself and others. > Once again I am not diminishing his accomplishments. I started my own company with the same amount of money but never claimed to have "bootstrapped"it. Well, that's a problem of definition more than anything else. If you want to use the term bootstrapping as starting with nothing that's fine by me but I do note that even the word assumes the presence of boots and straps. The key question is if the money was yours or not. If it wasn't then you weren't bootstrapping. > We on HN live in a bubble that amazes me. No, you choose to use terms in ways that are different from the rest of us. That's not a bubble, that's a terms issue. This can make communication hard. > I know first hand how much it costs to start a company and how hard it is to raise a 1M€ (I heard it is as hard as raising 10M$ in the valley, but never tried to raise in the US so take that with a grain of salt!). That depends. There is a lot of 'stupid money' floating around. Besides, raising money is explicitly not part of bootstrapping. > I also know it is much, much harder to get your first 1M€ of revenue. Yes, that's true. > Like one of my business angel once told me "il nest de bon argent que celui du client": the only good kind of money is the customer's. Yes, that's good advice, but it comes from an investor.
- karambahh 10y ago
  Please bear with me, I am not trying to be a smart-ass like many seem to think, these are honest questions and I think that they also come from using a foreign language and coming from a different culture. I think you're right in calling that a problem of definition. I agree with everything you said about money and investors management. I'd just add that "stupid money" probably isn't the good kind of money :-) At least I know that I would have made a mistake accepting a large amount of that kind of money. Choosing a smaller amount coming from people I trusted more probably helped me a lot in my beginnings. Now to my honest follow-up question: let's say a billionaire puts his 1B$ into a new venture, would you call that "boostrapping" as well?
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    > let's say a billionaire puts his 1B$ into a new venture, would you call that "boostrapping" as well? Depending on how he got the billion and whether or not there is outside investment involved, possibly yes, but the term is usually used for small amounts of money (say < $100k or so). But that's a technicality. But truth be told very few people are in that luxurious position and those that are will almost never risk all (or even a substantial part) of their private capital on an entirely new venture. So that's highly hypothetical and would take the better part of several decades before you'd be in a position to execute that phase of your bootstrap. Elon Musk comes close but even he routinely uses outside capital and so is not really bootstrapping (though I'm not aware of anybody else that is so willing to put most or all of his own money into new ventures). Bootstrapping comes from the imagery of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. You come into the world naked, without substantial inherited money, you become employed somewhere, you save some money, maybe do some side jobs, one day you jump ship and go full time into your own business and your savings provide your runway. That's the textbook definition of a bootstrapped business. It tends to produce small to mid-sized companies ($100K to $10M) in revenues and anywhere from one to 50 or so employees. It's the most sure-fire path to any kind of independence for skilled workers and has a totally different risk profile from a business that takes on outside investment. (Larger risks of failure, potentially larger returns)
    - 10y ago
civilian 10y ago
Just a quick definition: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bootstrap.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bootstrap.asp > Bootstrap is a situation in which an entrepreneur starts a company with little capital. An individual is said to be boot strapping when he or she attempts to found and build a company from personal finances or from the operating revenues of the new company.
codegeek 10y ago
You seem to misunderstand what the word "bootstrapped" means and I don't mean disrespect. Just because he put $55K of his own money does not make it any less bootstrapped. In fact, that is the definition of bootstrapped. He used his own money. He did it fulltime. You seem to have this notion that to bootstrap a business, you have to start from $0 or perhaps a very small amount. DISCLAIMER: I bootstrapped a business with similar amount to his but nowhere near his level of success (embarassing but happy with what I have done so far in 2.5 years). We are a much smaller team though so yes, I have not spent too much on growth yet.

jacquesm 10y ago

> It is ten times the median savings an american family has The median American family is not trying to start a business. Also: if you can't manage your own funds and save please don't start a company, it will most likely not work and create misery for yourself and others. > Once again I am not diminishing his accomplishments. I started my own company with the same amount of money but never claimed to have "bootstrapped"it. Well, that's a problem of definition more than anything else. If you want to use the term bootstrapping as starting with nothing that's fine by me but I do note that even the word assumes the presence of boots and straps. The key question is if the money was yours or not. If it wasn't then you weren't bootstrapping. > We on HN live in a bubble that amazes me. No, you choose to use terms in ways that are different from the rest of us. That's not a bubble, that's a terms issue. This can make communication hard. > I know first hand how much it costs to start a company and how hard it is to raise a 1M€ (I heard it is as hard as raising 10M$ in the valley, but never tried to raise in the US so take that with a grain of salt!). That depends. There is a lot of 'stupid money' floating around. Besides, raising money is explicitly not part of bootstrapping. > I also know it is much, much harder to get your first 1M€ of revenue. Yes, that's true. > Like one of my business angel once told me "il nest de bon argent que celui du client": the only good kind of money is the customer's. Yes, that's good advice, but it comes from an investor.

karambahh 10y ago
Please bear with me, I am not trying to be a smart-ass like many seem to think, these are honest questions and I think that they also come from using a foreign language and coming from a different culture. I think you're right in calling that a problem of definition. I agree with everything you said about money and investors management. I'd just add that "stupid money" probably isn't the good kind of money :-) At least I know that I would have made a mistake accepting a large amount of that kind of money. Choosing a smaller amount coming from people I trusted more probably helped me a lot in my beginnings. Now to my honest follow-up question: let's say a billionaire puts his 1B$ into a new venture, would you call that "boostrapping" as well?
- jacquesm 10y ago
  > let's say a billionaire puts his 1B$ into a new venture, would you call that "boostrapping" as well? Depending on how he got the billion and whether or not there is outside investment involved, possibly yes, but the term is usually used for small amounts of money (say < $100k or so). But that's a technicality. But truth be told very few people are in that luxurious position and those that are will almost never risk all (or even a substantial part) of their private capital on an entirely new venture. So that's highly hypothetical and would take the better part of several decades before you'd be in a position to execute that phase of your bootstrap. Elon Musk comes close but even he routinely uses outside capital and so is not really bootstrapping (though I'm not aware of anybody else that is so willing to put most or all of his own money into new ventures). Bootstrapping comes from the imagery of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. You come into the world naked, without substantial inherited money, you become employed somewhere, you save some money, maybe do some side jobs, one day you jump ship and go full time into your own business and your savings provide your runway. That's the textbook definition of a bootstrapped business. It tends to produce small to mid-sized companies ($100K to $10M) in revenues and anywhere from one to 50 or so employees. It's the most sure-fire path to any kind of independence for skilled workers and has a totally different risk profile from a business that takes on outside investment. (Larger risks of failure, potentially larger returns)
  - 10y ago

civilian 10y ago

Just a quick definition: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bootstrap.asp http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bootstrap.asp > Bootstrap is a situation in which an entrepreneur starts a company with little capital. An individual is said to be boot strapping when he or she attempts to found and build a company from personal finances or from the operating revenues of the new company.

codegeek 10y ago

You seem to misunderstand what the word "bootstrapped" means and I don't mean disrespect. Just because he put $55K of his own money does not make it any less bootstrapped. In fact, that is the definition of bootstrapped. He used his own money. He did it fulltime. You seem to have this notion that to bootstrap a business, you have to start from $0 or perhaps a very small amount. DISCLAIMER: I bootstrapped a business with similar amount to his but nowhere near his level of success (embarassing but happy with what I have done so far in 2.5 years). We are a much smaller team though so yes, I have not spent too much on growth yet.