Open for Business Stage

Dave Concannon left a long and thoughtful comment on yesterday’s “The Business of Everyone’s Business” Great article Sean. Recently, a developer I work with sent a mail around to the (small) team that blew me away. After a glitch with an internal system he sent a mail which read: “Who’s job is it to fix this?”. When you have someone who can’t take personal responsibility for something that falls directly within their skill set, I’d be wary of their direct involvement in the bigger picture. Certainly, their opinion is as valid as anyone else’s.

A lot of bootstrappers start out by selling their product or services to friends or people they know and/or have worked with in the past. One of the early thresholds a team crosses is making the transition to “selling to strangers” (see the “Startup Maturity Checklist” for some relevant questions) and they can get tripped up on a number of points. Two key challenges Free Consulting: strangers may want to learn more about the technology area you are addressing and request one or more sales calls while they listen attentively.

I think a bootstrapper’s true scarce resource is time. Determining how to be most effective with how you spend your time is more important than spending too many cycles on trying to save nickels. As a side effect of cutting out ineffective activities you will tend to cut unnecessary expenses. “Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.” Samuel Smiles

With Athol Foden’s encouragement I have submitted the following session (links added) for this year’s Silicon Valley Code Camp: Software Startup Maturity Checklist This session is for both aspiring and active entrepreneurs. We will walk through a 36 point checklist that covers Product Development, Customer Development, and Business Operations.