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Bootstrapping has some inherent disadvantages: you're working to pay the rent at the same time you're trying to build a successful product, so you have less tim

Bootstrapping has some inherent disadvantages: you're working to pay the rent at the same time you're trying to build a successful product, so you have less time to accomplish what you really want to do, and less financial resources overall. But if you can overcome these obstacles using proper time management, project scheduling and keeping fixed costs to a minimum, you'll end up with significantly greater equity and fewer fingers in your proverbial pie, in contrast to giving up equity and answering to your investors, however useful their input may be. Bootstrapping a startup requires you have a real-world business model which actually generates revenue, which is more than many investor-backed companies can say. However, a profitable model is not necessarily a sustainable one. You could fill your schedule with client-contracted work and pay the monthly overhead and maybe yourselves too, but it's not the most sustainable long-term business strategy (unless you really want to be doing this forever.) So you contract/consult to pay the bills, at the same time devoting a reasonable portion of your time to building your own products and looking for your "homerun."

lzw 16y ago
Maybe you wouldn't call it bootstrapping, but someone whose in their mid 20s, who has been working as an engineer for startups for the past 5 years, could easily have saved $25,000-$75,000. IF you live cheaply and "bootstrap" by focusing on your startup %100 of the time and funding it from these savings you could easily have a 2 year runway there... assuming also that your co-founders have similar savings. This is pretty much what I did, I saved money and now don't have to worry about contracts or client work, I can focus solely on the company and keep costs down as if I had taken outside investment.
- nletourneau 16y ago
  I'm in this boat. Me and my co-founder had enough to live on while we worked on the product for the last 6 months. I did do some consulting one day a week for spending cash, but it was limited to that and never really caused a huge time-suck. YC never really entered the conversation for us, I view YC as a place for people that fall into a "I have this idea I want to try, but if I quit my job I can't pay rent" type category, which wasn't me or the people I'm working with. (edit to say that I'm not knocking the stated category, I'm really happy that YC exists)
thibaut_barrere 16y ago
> you're working to pay the rent at the same time I gave more thinking to this last year, and asked myself what I could do to change this. So we moved to a cheap place with the whole family, here we're able to buy a house without mortage (before the move it would have required 25/30 years mortgage + 2 high-paying jobs, to get something that wasn't even close in term of quality/space). Here goes the rent :)

lzw 16y ago

Maybe you wouldn't call it bootstrapping, but someone whose in their mid 20s, who has been working as an engineer for startups for the past 5 years, could easily have saved $25,000-$75,000. IF you live cheaply and "bootstrap" by focusing on your startup %100 of the time and funding it from these savings you could easily have a 2 year runway there... assuming also that your co-founders have similar savings. This is pretty much what I did, I saved money and now don't have to worry about contracts or client work, I can focus solely on the company and keep costs down as if I had taken outside investment.

nletourneau 16y ago
I'm in this boat. Me and my co-founder had enough to live on while we worked on the product for the last 6 months. I did do some consulting one day a week for spending cash, but it was limited to that and never really caused a huge time-suck. YC never really entered the conversation for us, I view YC as a place for people that fall into a "I have this idea I want to try, but if I quit my job I can't pay rent" type category, which wasn't me or the people I'm working with. (edit to say that I'm not knocking the stated category, I'm really happy that YC exists)

thibaut_barrere 16y ago

> you're working to pay the rent at the same time I gave more thinking to this last year, and asked myself what I could do to change this. So we moved to a cheap place with the whole family, here we're able to buy a house without mortage (before the move it would have required 25/30 years mortgage + 2 high-paying jobs, to get something that wasn't even close in term of quality/space). Here goes the rent :)