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How to bootstrap a Startup with less than $10k. Meet Tipsandtrip.

thestartup.eu

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Re: How to bootstrap a Startup with less than $10k. Meet Tipsandtrip.

#11

Post by starkfist »

brianmwang wrote: post #10

One of the things that always bothers me about the "How to build and launch a product with <$X" articles is the fact that they almost always talk about the costs of outsourcing design/development but almost never talk about the actual costs of living for founders. You know what I'd love to see? Articles about how a couple of scrappy founders cut their living costs to the bone, keep the majority of development in-hous…

In Italy, the answer is "we still live at home with our parents."

In San Francisco, the answer was usually "my parents still pay my rent."

Re: How to bootstrap a Startup with less than $10k. Meet Tipsandtrip.

#12

Post by ahoyhere »

brianmwang wrote: post #10

One of the things that always bothers me about the "How to build and launch a product with <$X" articles is the fact that they almost always talk about the costs of outsourcing design/development but almost never talk about the actual costs of living for founders. You know what I'd love to see? Articles about how a couple of scrappy founders cut their living costs to the bone, keep the majority of development in-hous…

Why wait for articles to be written? Why not do it yourself?

We built http://letsfreckle.com for "free" -- did all the work ourselves, while consulting.

If you're really passionate, you'll find a way. Sure, it would have been nice to have foregone the "while consulting" part, and done nothing but focus on our product all day long... but nobody was handing us a free lunch. So we did it, the way we could do it, without any particular hardship except being tired and annoyed.

EDIT: fixed tense. Living in a non-English-speaking country is wreaking havoc with my grammar.

Re: How to bootstrap a Startup with less than $10k. Meet Tipsandtrip.

#13

Post by magno »

bond wrote: post #6
magno wrote: post #2

Here to answer any question you have on tipsandtrip :)

How do you make money? What's the business model?

We will try first to build a community/traffic and then will look for revenues. Revenues will be adv based (display, affiliation with travel sites).

Re: How to bootstrap a Startup with less than $10k. Meet Tipsandtrip.

#14

Post by magno »

Concours wrote: post #8
magno wrote: post #2

Here to answer any question you have on tipsandtrip :)

any revenues numbers? how was it, working with remote teams?

No revenues at the moment. Working with remote teams is fine if you use the right tools (redmine, svn for example) and if you try to avoid working with people on the other part of the ocean. We worked with people in Argentina, Japan, India, Ukraine and Russia. The last two are at the moment the countries where we find the highest programming skills.

Re: How to bootstrap a Startup with less than $10k. Meet Tipsandtrip.

#15

Post by keefe »

nroach wrote: post #7

Great job of getting to MVP on the cheap! But it seems like a budget of $10K or so would only work for relatively simple apps. Doing something like Dropbox, 280Atlas, or FlightCaster (probably) would take significantly more money. Any suggestions for how you'd proceed if you knew up front that you were facing a much longer development cycle?

learn to write code competently or partner with a competent engineer

Re: How to bootstrap a Startup with less than $10k. Meet Tipsandtrip.

#16

Post by magno »

nroach wrote: post #7

Great job of getting to MVP on the cheap! But it seems like a budget of $10K or so would only work for relatively simple apps. Doing something like Dropbox, 280Atlas, or FlightCaster (probably) would take significantly more money. Any suggestions for how you'd proceed if you knew up front that you were facing a much longer development cycle?

You are right, tipsandtrip is a relatively simple project (web + api + iphone) but I think that a similar process can be used also on larger project to build a MVP that can be launched and shown to investors. Better to have something working to show than a couple dozen of slides ;-)

Re: How to bootstrap a Startup with less than $10k. Meet Tipsandtrip.

#17

Post by pclark »

ahoyhere wrote: post #12
brianmwang wrote: post #10

One of the things that always bothers me about the "How to build and launch a product with <$X" articles is the fact that they almost always talk about the costs of outsourcing design/development but almost never talk about the actual costs of living for founders. You know what I'd love to see? Articles about how a couple of scrappy founders cut their living costs to the bone, keep the majority of development in-hous…

Why wait for articles to be written? Why not do it yourself? We built http://letsfreckle.com for "free" -- did all the work ourselves, while consulting. If you're really passionate, you'll find a way. Sure, it would have been nice to have foregone the "while consulting" part, and done nothing but focus on our product all day long... but nobody was handing us a free lunch. So we did it, the way we could do it, without…

is http://letsfreckle.com your full time career now?

Re: How to bootstrap a Startup with less than $10k. Meet Tipsandtrip.

#19

Post by daveungerer »

Wait a second... we'll have to find a new word for the concept currently known as bootstrapping, because articles like these make the word completely meaningless.

Bootstrapping means creating a self-sustaining business. At a minimum, this means you have revenue to cover your running costs. You can only say "bootstrap with less than $10K" if that 10K gives your business enough revenue to cover its running costs. Yet this is what one of the founders has to say in another comment here on HN: We will try first to build a community/traffic and then will look for revenues.

I guess it's not the founders' fault that the article was written this way. But once they've spent a lot of time and money on actually building their community/traffic + the inevitable further development costs, and they start making some revenue, we'll know how much it cost them to bootstrap the business.

Some great tips for getting an MVP together though.

Re: How to bootstrap a Startup with less than $10k. Meet Tipsandtrip.

#20

Post by ahoyhere »

pclark wrote: post #17
ahoyhere wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wait for articles to be written? Why not do it yourself? We built http://letsfreckle.com for "free" -- did all the work ourselves, while consulting. If you're really passionate, you'll find a way. Sure, it would have been nice to have foregone the "while consulting" part, and done nothing but focus on our product all day long... but nobody was handing us a free lunch. So we did it, the way we could do it, without…

is http://letsfreckle.com your full time career now?

No, but I did quit consulting in January to focus exclusively on products. I am all about doing multiple things and having multiple revenue streams. That said, Freckle will be earning enough to live on comfortably in the next 2-3 mos though, based on my forecasts. :) We are rolling a significant amount of that money back into promotion, and hiring help.
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