The Bootstrapped Report : Month 1 - Laying the foundations

The bootstrap report is a month by month account of my efforts as a bootstrapping entrepreneur. It will include insights and lessons from the beginning of a bootstrapper’s adventure. My aim is to give up freelance or consultancy work to be my own boss and create a lifestyle business.

It has already been a month since my declaration about the start of my year of hustle and its been very busy. Unfortunately there has not been much bootstrapping going on.

I got back from travelling and spent most of the month finding a place to live and looking for work, as a bootstrapping entrepreneur I will initially need to freelance for a bit to fund my efforts.

All is not lost though.

Laying the foundations

This month was concentrated on learning. This may seem a bit of a waste of time as I am not really going to make any money from learning, but I see it as laying the foundations.

I need to learn to build the house properly before I start, I don’t want to have to pull down walls later because they were built incorrectly. I need to create a foundation of knowledge about creating, running and developing a new business. With that in mind, the main way I want to generate income is by building web-based products that will be subscription based. This will come in the form of one or many startups.

Off on a slight tangent!

As a founder with a technical background I have had great successes using Agile methodologies to produce software, so I was looking for methodologies to follow for internet startups. Methodologies provide tried and tested methods to improve practices, overcome problems and provide a better way of working. There are not too many startup methodologies around, but I found one that appealed to me, The Lean Startup.

As part of my business education I read (or listened to, as I got the audiobook) the Lean startup and hope to put into practice the ideas presented in the book. Hopefully I will glean some learnings from trying to implement the lean startup techniques and I will share on the bootstrap report. Maybe I will get round to a book review in the future.

The First Product

My plan of a product empire has to start somewhere and my first product is called Chefnote. It’s not ready for public use yet, that will be next month. Its also a big part of what I have been up to the past month.

I had actually started coding before I went away travelling, when I came back to the app I decided to re-write the code and give it a bit of a redesign. The aim is to get the product deployed and for me to start using it. The idea for this app came from a problem I was having so I will become the first customer and in true 37signal style I will be eating my own dog food, I think it is vital when you build a product. This will then be followed swiftly by a Minimum Viable Product release to friends, family and anyone else who want to use it (Lean startup already working!), that is the plan anyway.

Easy Ltd.

As part of getting up and running as a serious startup I also started my first limited company, Tiny Code Factory Ltd. This will be my product and dev. company that will allow me to separate business from personal finance and be just that little bit more professional.

I found the process of setting up the company easy because of a service called golimited.co, well recommended. This is a simple product by crunch a UK accountancy and web-app firm. It cost £15 and they do all the company house registration for you.

Summary

I am not making money but so far not spending much either (just the cost of setting up the Ltd). The first release of Chefnote is live, only for me, but will be opening up for others soon so things are looking good.

Overall I discovered that coming home from travelling and moving into a new flat is very disruptive but, if you pick and choose tasks carefully they can all work in harmony with major disruptions. I have yet to see if my learning foundation will have a good effect and allow me to steer the business in the right direction. Onwards and Upwards!

Leave some comments, tell me if its too boring or is there anything you would particularly like to hear about.