5 ms·

startup without VC in SF, is this still possible these days? bootstrapping can happen anywhere but not in SF these days in my opinion due to cost associated, I

by ausjke 7y ago

startup without VC in SF, is this still possible these days? bootstrapping can happen anywhere but not in SF these days in my opinion due to cost associated, It used to be a startup in your garage, nowadays it's called lean-startup with remote peers(sometimes overseas to save costs further)

opportune 7y ago
You say it yourself, you pretty much have to go lean to do an effective bootstrapped startup, and focus on profitability very quickly. Otherwise the salary costs will kill you unless you have very deep pockets. One model that I would like to see more of is a type of co-op, maybe even part time. This allows you to defer payment in lieu of equity, at the obvious cost of not having people's attention as fulltime employees, and slower iteration time. The benefit is that you can actually get FAANG caliber engineers to work with you since you are paying entirely in equity
- ausjke 7y ago
  physically, to make startup a success out of 99% failure rate, you have to laser focused with a small capable team to break through somewhere. A loose team is really hard to make profit before everyone is burned out. Hiring is painful, or the most painful plus it's super time consuming and distracting, finding nice peers sharing equity is even harder, harder than finding a wife on tinder I feel. I don't have better ideas though.
  - opportune 7y ago
    I think I would have an easy time finding peers to share equity from my personal network, although I could only know for sure when push came to shove and it was actually time to start working. But yeah it could be really hard running an actual business where everyone is only working 8-25 hr/week. For it to be viable, you would need to focus on getting an MVP up fast and reaching ramen-profitability. Then once there's enough money for everyone to pay their bills, you could start transitioning people to fulltime. Again since you are sharing equity generously, as long as you find like-minded peers, ramen profitability for each employee/co-founder is all you need
deleted 7y ago
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by ausjke 7y ago

opportune 7y ago

You say it yourself, you pretty much have to go lean to do an effective bootstrapped startup, and focus on profitability very quickly. Otherwise the salary costs will kill you unless you have very deep pockets. One model that I would like to see more of is a type of co-op, maybe even part time. This allows you to defer payment in lieu of equity, at the obvious cost of not having people's attention as fulltime employees, and slower iteration time. The benefit is that you can actually get FAANG caliber engineers to work with you since you are paying entirely in equity

ausjke 7y ago
physically, to make startup a success out of 99% failure rate, you have to laser focused with a small capable team to break through somewhere. A loose team is really hard to make profit before everyone is burned out. Hiring is painful, or the most painful plus it's super time consuming and distracting, finding nice peers sharing equity is even harder, harder than finding a wife on tinder I feel. I don't have better ideas though.
- opportune 7y ago
  I think I would have an easy time finding peers to share equity from my personal network, although I could only know for sure when push came to shove and it was actually time to start working. But yeah it could be really hard running an actual business where everyone is only working 8-25 hr/week. For it to be viable, you would need to focus on getting an MVP up fast and reaching ramen-profitability. Then once there's enough money for everyone to pay their bills, you could start transitioning people to fulltime. Again since you are sharing equity generously, as long as you find like-minded peers, ramen profitability for each employee/co-founder is all you need

deleted 7y ago

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