We’re able to accomplish a ton of things on a limited budget and are close to launching our first branded consumer rewards program. More to come on that later. While it’s been a great experience so far, there have been plenty of frustrations with the bootstrapping process. For many entrepreneurs, bootstrapping can be a mixed-bag. With limited funds, you can’t hire the necessary help to accomplish goals in a timely manner. Things just take longer. It might get old working out of your house or apartment. And you keep watching your bank accounts go down, down, down, hoping that revenue and cashflow are right around the corner (since a bootstraper is not expecting to go out and raise more money from outside investors just yet). We fit somewhere in between I guess. We’ve accomplished a ton with little money and have been able to find and retain the right talent to contribute to the company going forward. The frustrating part with bootstrapping is that there are so many things we want to do (partnerships to pursue, technology to build etc.) and most needs to be put off until we have more money to hire more resources. There’s never enough time to accomplish all goals, so the task of hard ranking priorities becomes a key part of our execution strategy. What needs to be done now and what can wait until later is a very common discussion between Seth and me. I guess these are the sacrifices we have to make to avoid raising more money and diluting down our ownership. It looks like we will continue to bootstrap for the next few months and will likely need to raise a modest amount of outside money to continue growing our company. We’ll keep you posted!
