5 ms·

i really don't appreciate these black-and-white treatises on debt. it's a hardline, synthetic opinion that is designed to generate pageviews. it's bullshit.

i really don't appreciate these black-and-white treatises on debt. it's a hardline, synthetic opinion that is designed to generate pageviews. it's bullshit. debt is one of the most important and misunderstood tools a young profitable bootstrapped company has at its command. a proper understanding of the different forms of debt, how to raise it, how to service it, what to use it for, and what kind of revenues/growth to support with it is absolutely critical for a company to succeed. the bottom line is spending huge amounts of your own cash is incredibly reckless and dangerous, and is not the kind of thing a small, successful, profitable, growing company that has employees, suppliers, and customers (all to ANSWER TO) should be doing. to a certain extend, building a company is about injecting yourself as seamlessly as possible into the existing network of cash flows and money and increasing that magnitude over time. it's incredibly hard to achieve this kind of bootstrap (verging on the impossible) without either equity or debt. real businesses in the real world require capital goods and services, on time, on budget, and guaranteed. debt is a mechanism for getting those goods and services in a reliable manner that has successfully been used for thousands upon thousands (nobody knows for sure - read david graeber) of years. the miraculous thing is it turns the time value of money into something you can leverage now. also - interest rates for commercial debt are not the same as interest rates for personal or consumer debt - it differs in one very important function - commercial debt is supposed to increase profits so it very much depends on what the opportunity you are trying to finance is. consumer debt is a dead end and you better go in with eyes wide open - you're simply spending money on nice things. the same is not true with commercial debt which has an infinite number of permutations regarding motivation and returns. every successful company carries some kind of debt. every single one. doesn't matter if it's the spread on your payroll, net 30 invoices from your suppliers, amex charge card debt, garden variety credit card debt, structured loans, capital leases, or a simple "iou" to the local coffee shop for your daily commissary deliveries, it's a fundamental property of how people interact with each other in the real world.

hagbardgroup 13y ago
That's not what this guy is trying to say to people, though. He's criticizing people who buy traffic using corporate or personal credit cards without adequately capitalizing their company (i.e. trying to protect idiots from themselves, which is almost never possible). It's goofy to criticize credit qua credit though, because, as you say, every business in the world uses it. I don't think that articles like these are genuinely helpful to people. A book titled 'Bootstrapping 101' that went through a lot of the things you needed to know over maybe 300-500 pages written at a high level would be useful. 500 words of self-praise mixed with some old chestnuts may be entertaining for some people, but it does not fulfill the promise of the title.
- rmason 13y ago
  The best book that has ever imho been written on bootstrapping: Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup by Rob Walling and Mike Taber ISBN 0615373968
  - mkal_tsr 13y ago
    Reading the description and reviews on Amazon, I can't quite tell if this book is for my situation - I am post-MVP stage with people paying for it (as a private-beta site) and will need to open it up soon. Am I "too late/far-along" for this book? Thanks.
    - rmason 13y ago
      Absolutely not. You might also want to check out the pairs podcast called Startups for the rest of us: http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ They also run the MicroConf conference and the videos are golden: 2013 http://www.microconf.com/videos-2013.html http://www.microconf.com/videos-2013.html 2012 http://www.microconf.com/videos-2012.html http://www.microconf.com/videos-2012.html
      - mkal_tsr 13y ago
        This is great, thanks!
  - hagbardgroup 13y ago
    Thanks. I read this guy's blog some years ago. Looks like a useful book!
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
TheCowboy 13y ago
I might be reading too critically, but the author also seems somewhat dodgy to me. There are some truths throughout, which seemed mostly obvious, but overall I don't think he presented what the title proposed. He has no problem throwing around million dollar numbers, but doesn't mention his businesses in this piece. He doesn't go into greater detail how they worked in those situations, which would help demonstrate the claim of universality of his advice. Though it could just be because he assumes his readers, the "Grinders," will already know this. But it could also be to encourage me to pay for access to his 'Truths.' Reading more through his site I get the impression that it involves affiliate marketing, and selling coaching/forum subscriptions to wantpreneurs. His tone itself is weird, where he paternalistically identifies his readers as "Grinders," and behaves like a shaman with access to 'The Truth' which you will not be able to obtain from anyone from him. In one article, he tries to deconstruct the idea of ROI, or he creates a strawman version of ROI, and focuses on a way that some people might misuse this number. It basically encourages people to ignore the numbers. He also keeps promising to be straight with the reader in a completely non-straight roundabout manner. It seems to reject the idea of ROI, which is essentially an emotionless analytic tool, in favor of what doesn't conflict with someone who is selling you the entrepreneurial passion and packaging it as your personal epic journey. He does try to contextualize this as more than just in situations where people lose money, but I think it is reckless to discourage people from looking at the cold numbers of any venture. If his message in the linked piece is simply to avoid splurging on ads, I think it's been said better by others. Taken to its full extent, it goes too far in the opposite direction by encouraging people to be risk averse and avoiding any type of debt instrument. That said, he does seem to possess charisma and a potent style that draws people toward him.
- imgrind 13y ago
  All you have to do is read the about page, and there is a part two to this series already. Easier to break down the last years of business into segments
  - TheCowboy 13y ago
    I did skim it, but it doesn't add the info I've described as being useful for this particular article. Additionally, I don't see details about the 3 business, other than their names. And I'm not sure if you're including ImGrind as one of those businesses. One, Revived Media, has a broken link. iMobiTrax I see is analytics. The third, Jinx Mobile Content, has no URL.
shobhitverma 13y ago
Yupp.

hagbardgroup 13y ago

That's not what this guy is trying to say to people, though. He's criticizing people who buy traffic using corporate or personal credit cards without adequately capitalizing their company (i.e. trying to protect idiots from themselves, which is almost never possible). It's goofy to criticize credit qua credit though, because, as you say, every business in the world uses it. I don't think that articles like these are genuinely helpful to people. A book titled 'Bootstrapping 101' that went through a lot of the things you needed to know over maybe 300-500 pages written at a high level would be useful. 500 words of self-praise mixed with some old chestnuts may be entertaining for some people, but it does not fulfill the promise of the title.

rmason 13y ago
The best book that has ever imho been written on bootstrapping: Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup by Rob Walling and Mike Taber ISBN 0615373968
- mkal_tsr 13y ago
  Reading the description and reviews on Amazon, I can't quite tell if this book is for my situation - I am post-MVP stage with people paying for it (as a private-beta site) and will need to open it up soon. Am I "too late/far-along" for this book? Thanks.
  - rmason 13y ago
    Absolutely not. You might also want to check out the pairs podcast called Startups for the rest of us: http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ http://www.startupsfortherestofus.com/ They also run the MicroConf conference and the videos are golden: 2013 http://www.microconf.com/videos-2013.html http://www.microconf.com/videos-2013.html 2012 http://www.microconf.com/videos-2012.html http://www.microconf.com/videos-2012.html
    - mkal_tsr 13y ago
      This is great, thanks!
- hagbardgroup 13y ago
  Thanks. I read this guy's blog some years ago. Looks like a useful book!
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

TheCowboy 13y ago

I might be reading too critically, but the author also seems somewhat dodgy to me. There are some truths throughout, which seemed mostly obvious, but overall I don't think he presented what the title proposed. He has no problem throwing around million dollar numbers, but doesn't mention his businesses in this piece. He doesn't go into greater detail how they worked in those situations, which would help demonstrate the claim of universality of his advice. Though it could just be because he assumes his readers, the "Grinders," will already know this. But it could also be to encourage me to pay for access to his 'Truths.' Reading more through his site I get the impression that it involves affiliate marketing, and selling coaching/forum subscriptions to wantpreneurs. His tone itself is weird, where he paternalistically identifies his readers as "Grinders," and behaves like a shaman with access to 'The Truth' which you will not be able to obtain from anyone from him. In one article, he tries to deconstruct the idea of ROI, or he creates a strawman version of ROI, and focuses on a way that some people might misuse this number. It basically encourages people to ignore the numbers. He also keeps promising to be straight with the reader in a completely non-straight roundabout manner. It seems to reject the idea of ROI, which is essentially an emotionless analytic tool, in favor of what doesn't conflict with someone who is selling you the entrepreneurial passion and packaging it as your personal epic journey. He does try to contextualize this as more than just in situations where people lose money, but I think it is reckless to discourage people from looking at the cold numbers of any venture. If his message in the linked piece is simply to avoid splurging on ads, I think it's been said better by others. Taken to its full extent, it goes too far in the opposite direction by encouraging people to be risk averse and avoiding any type of debt instrument. That said, he does seem to possess charisma and a potent style that draws people toward him.

imgrind 13y ago
All you have to do is read the about page, and there is a part two to this series already. Easier to break down the last years of business into segments
- TheCowboy 13y ago
  I did skim it, but it doesn't add the info I've described as being useful for this particular article. Additionally, I don't see details about the 3 business, other than their names. And I'm not sure if you're including ImGrind as one of those businesses. One, Revived Media, has a broken link. iMobiTrax I see is analytics. The third, Jinx Mobile Content, has no URL.

shobhitverma 13y ago

Yupp.