PDX Web Innovators

Dateline: Wednesday, February 4, 2009 - conference tables at Cubespace in Portland, Oregon for the Portland Web Innovators Meeting

The early evening meeting of the Portland Web Innovators group was
attended by about thirty people with a mix of developers, designers and
business folks.  The conversation centered around money.  Having it,
not having it, making it and spending it.   Carolynn Duncan
(@hundreddollar) lead a talk that took the group through the paces on
bootstrapping a company.  Here is my rendition of her talk slightly
condensed and sprinkled with colorful commentary from yours truly.

Carolynn began the conversation with a slide that says “Bootstrapping is good. Having a revenue model is better.”
This set the tone for ensuing discussion.  Carolynn’s opening volley
was to set the stage for what bootstrapping really is.  For many of us
that are familiar with the “golden days” where VCs just through out
cash to any idea, we have a warped perception of bootstrap.   Back in
the day we would outline all of our wishes and wants to make sure we
could pay salaries, get comfy offices and attend trade shows.  We would
then double that amount and go look for funds in the amount of millions
of dollars.   Carolynn reeled us in and helped us to think in terms of
reality and today’s economy.  She defined bootstrapping a business as
determining the bare minimum amount of cash needed to get a solution to
a point where the revenue model out paced the expenses.  What a novel
concept.  Spend as little as possible and make as much as you can. 
Although this is inherent to our every day lives, for some reason the
tech start up world forgot about this basic business tenant and it’s
about time the tech community was told straight up to change their ways.

Full article on www.startupgeek.org