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There are four stages of a bootstrapped business:
- Preparation
- Survival
- Stability
- Growth
- Preparation
- Survival
- Stability
- Growth
Preparation Phase => The focus is on finding the audience, their biggest problem and a solution that solves the problem. Once you found a problem, validate that your audience also see this as a problem and it is worth solving.
You should also validate the solution you have come up with for the above problem. The validation does not happen in a vacuum, talk to your future customers. Once you have recorded something for your reference, leave it there for some time to avoid any initial bias taking over it
Your service will never be used in isolation. It will always be embedded in some sort of workflow. Looking into the stages of the workflow gives you a deep understanding of how your customers handle their day to day activities and how your solution can help in this.
As a founder, you should understand that perfection and a finished product is a myth. The product is never finished and whenever you release something it is a feature ready version of the product.
Very often founders confuse having a product is having a business. A product is not a business. A business is a complex system of process. A reliable system to sell the process at a profit continuously.
An Organised business is a sellable business. Make every effort to build a well documented business that can be handover to someone else when the time comes.
The 3R's of business are: (Repeatable, Reliable and Resilient). A sustainable bootstrapped business is a successful when there is a repeatable way to continuously provide a reliable and resilient value providing product at a profit.
The Survival Stage => It is the stage where you are going to convert your prototype or your MVP to something more by building the right things in the right way.
Running a bootstrapped business is hard and it takes a toll on the founders health too. A business can only be as healthy as it's founder. Your mental and physical health is important. The goal should be to build a business which can improve your life along with your customers.
A perfect product does not exists. The same applies to the business. A perfect business does not exists. Nothing will ever be perfect and there is always a room for improvement.
Don't pick the low hanging fruit while solving your customer's problem. Your competitors will do the same. You will stay ahead if you are solving things from which your competitor are afraid and you can stay ahead of them by doing this often.
You cannot be an expert from the day 1. Expertise takes time and experience. You cannot read up on experience. The only way to get experience is to get your hands dirty. You have to work for your customers, learn form them and get the experience required for being an expert.
Learn to say no. Bootstrapping a business means saying no to non-essential things. You have limited resources and time. Learn to prioritise your action and choices and start with the one which can have more impact. Every decision boils down to whether it adds value or not.
Use a feature prioritisation framework. Some of them are:
- RICE
- DIE
- KANO Model
- Story Mapping
- Value vs Complexity
Choose one and stick to it.
- RICE
- DIE
- KANO Model
- Story Mapping
- Value vs Complexity
Choose one and stick to it.
Stability Stage => The important part when you reached this stage is that you have built a business which has survived long enough. Now it is the time to scale it. Optimise your process and automate as much as you can to provide value product while maintaining a scale of users.
The scale means your customer base will grow in size and diversity. You have to deal with the diverging expectations and requirement while delivering the same value you have promised to your customers.
Do a transition from a synchronous to asynchronous or self-help kind of system. Create a knowledge base with FAQs and frequently update it. This will reduce the time spent on responding to the repeated request. If things are getting out of hand, get help. Hire someone.
Align your customer service voices to the customer psychology. Use the language and jargon while talking to your customers which they can understand. This can reduce the un-necessary mis-understanding when customers are frustrated and helpless.
Perform a continuous customer validation. Talk to your customers to regularly check if your product still solves your customers critical problem sufficiently. This also help in retaining customers by solving their concerns before it becomes a deal breaker for them.
A churned customer is a double loss. Now you have to find two new customers. One to cover the loss and one to grow further. Customer retention should be of at-most importance at this stage.
The Growth Stage => You now have a mature and stable business and you have been working hard in automating & delegating the process, you have ended up with a business that runs like a well oiled machine. The things have slowed down and days of fire-fighting are over.
At this time you have to answer the big question in the room. Do you want to continue running it or do you want to sell your business to someone interested.
The options to continue means growing the business further and even bringing in someone to handle the day to day activities for yourself.
The option to sell means you will have to spend some time to get yourself out of equation and grow your wealth in a single event & move on.
The option to sell means you will have to spend some time to get yourself out of equation and grow your wealth in a single event & move on.
If you have not read the book yet, read it. https://thebootstrappedfounder.com/zero-to-sold/
