If you’re a small business or providing a service, then in reality Wal-Mart is the antithesis of what you should be doing. Think about it. Wal-Mart doesn’t stay in business by providing quality services or even by keeping the customer happy.
If you’re a small biz owner struggling to make a profit, you know that competing with the big dogs is usually a no-win situation. Wal-Mart has an obvious advantage over your local ma and pop shops. The huge chain gets drastic discounts from vendors, can afford to sell for little to zero markup and makes their money based purely on volume.
This applies to online businesses as well. If you are selling any merchandise online you are going to have to contend with giants like Amazon and Ebay whether you like it or not.
This is the final piece in this 3 Part series, courtesy of Alex Genadinik. Here is Part 1 and Part 2 if you need to catch up.
Introducing: Guest blogger and fellow Tweep Alex. Alex has a background in software engineering and is currently focused on building semantic systems for the business world. He is the founder of Semantic Valley, a web 3.0 start-up specializing in creating taxonomy and ontology based products. Their alpha-stage demo of a semantic search of shoes can be seen at MilderWilder.com. Say hello on Twitter too! @genadinik
Are Some Things Impossible to Do for Free?
Legal Documents
At some point, a company needs patents, trademarks, copyrights, operating agreements and equity-vesting schedule documents. There are at least two options on how to get these for free.
You can barter. Some lawyers will work for equity, but this is my least favorite method because the documents listed above require an intellectual property lawyer, a general business lawyer, and likely along the way, you will need a few other types of lawyers. Typically, the fewer equity holders you have the better.
My favorite approach is to D.I.Y (Do It Yourself). Make sure you only create the documents you really need. A lawyer might write up a 50-page partnership agreement that will take tens of hours and cost tens of thousands of dollars, but it is much easier to work with partners you can trust and be able to write a simple document that covers the basics and allows you to move on and focus on running the actual business.
Office Space
There is some debate in the bootstrapping world about whether to have an office or not. I would say it is much better to not have an office. Don’t make your partners waste time, money and stress tolerance on commuting. Why not use those to work on the actual company?! And when there have to be meetings, just get creative and find what works.
Holding Meetings
Get used to online meetings using Skype video chat, and other remote conferencing software. It will help you avoid trekking down to the local Starbucks and more importantly, open you up to working and collaborating with people anywhere in the world.
Registering Domain Names
This is one area where you have to pay a little. A domain name costs about $10/year. I realize nearly all the good domain names are taken. My advice is that instead of going out and buying a $1,000 domain name, hold out on buying a domain name for your company until you have at least a somewhat clear marketing and branding strategy. Once do you do decide to look for a domain name, here are some good qualities of a name you should look for:
This is the Part 2 of a 3 part series, courtesy of Alex Genadinik. Part 1 can be found here.
Introducing: Guest blogger and fellow Tweep Alex. Alex has a background in software engineering and is currently focused on building semantic systems for the business world. He is the founder of Semantic Valley, a web 3.0 start-up specializing in creating taxonomy and ontology based products. Their alpha-stage demo of a semantic search of shoes can be seen at MilderWilder.com. Say hello on Twitter too! @genadinik
Why Everyone Should Have Partners to Round Out the Team
Sometimes engineers who have become confident in the business world can pull off a start-up by themselves, but most people need partners. Business people always need engineers for the obvious reason that someone has to actually build the product. Engineers need business people and additional engineers because it is just too difficult for one person to write code, go to business meetings, network, deal with legal issues, do marketing, branding, social media, a slew of other tasks, while keeping a clear mind to maintain focus on their entrepreneurial vision.
The Perfect Skill Set of the Founding Team
Traditionally it has been thought that a perfect founding team consists of 2-4 people. The ideal mix should consist of one person who covers all things having to do with the business side, and the rest of the team members who have strong backgrounds in creating technology.
The engineers should ideally have different backgrounds within tech. One may be more of a back-end server engineer who would be in charge of architecture, while another could write business logic and focus more on the user-facing part of the application. As for the business person, she has to stand on her head doing all the non-tech tasks (legal issues, business docs, business networking, lead generation, light accounting, etc.) possible to allow the engineers to focus on building the core product.
Hunt for the Right Partners
Find A-players who buy into your idea and are willing to work crazy hours, side by side with you to grow the idea into a company. But how do you know whether people will deliver? People often say they will or can do various things, but often cannot or just do not. They may have the best intentions in mind, but few people can work in a highly-demanding and unstructured environment for a long time; especially without a regular salary.
My view is that everyone should be given a chance, and put into a position to succeed, even if it is a long shot. At the same time, to ensure you do not waste your time, let them prove themselves by assigning immediate tasks and see for yourself how they will perform. This will help you weed out bad partners.
Here are some specifics to look for:
*
o Responsiveness
o Professionalism
o Honesty
o Accountability
o Sharing of vision
o You respect them as people and professionals
If any of these qualities are not there, see it as a big red flag.
Appreciating Your Partners
Once you do find good partners, recognize that working for equity is much more difficult than for a regular salary, and appreciate their work. At the same time make sure they always have momentum-building, challenging but not overwhelming tasks.
This is the beginning of a 3 part series, courtesy of Alex Genadinik.
Introducing: Guest blogger and fellow Tweep Alex. Alex has a background in software engineering and is currently focused on building semantic systems for the business world. He is the founder of Semantic Valley, a web 3.0 start-up specializing in creating taxonomy and ontology based products. Their alpha-stage demo of a semantic search of shoes can be seen at MilderWilder.com. Say hello on Twitter too! @genadinik
There is a glut of overly optimistic blogs and articles giving advice and encouragement on entrepreneurship, innovation and fearlessness in the face of risk.
This can be quite misleading due to its authors’ success bias because they are the tiny percentage of people who have succeeded and are given a voice; among the infinitely many more people who have failed and whose stories are not widely read.
Unfortunately, chances are against most of us who try. The goal of this article is to offer suggestions on how to build a company and give it a chance to stand on its feet, while spending nothing more than the legal fee to register as a company. Hopefully it will afford you more time to try to build your company well.
What You Can Expect
During the bootstrapping stage the following milestones have to be accomplished in order to ensure the company is able to survive moving forward:
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