{"id":2441,"date":"2017-07-01T20:52:43","date_gmt":"2017-07-02T02:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/?p=2441"},"modified":"2017-10-10T19:28:08","modified_gmt":"2017-10-11T01:28:08","slug":"advice-for-the-bootstrapped-developer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2441","title":{"rendered":"Advice for the bootstrapped developer"},"content":{"rendered":"

I participated in a panel<\/a> for Boulder Startup Week, but previous to the panel, thought I’d be giving a 15 minute presentation. \u00a0I was going to talk about rules for the bootstrapped developer. \u00a0At The Food Corridor, we recently celebrated one year of having customers<\/a>. \u00a0In celebration of that, here are my seven guidelines:<\/p>\n

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  1. It will take longer than you think. \u00a0<\/strong>For any meaningful value of “it”. expect the process to take longer than planned. \u00a0Whether that is acquiring your first customer, building your product, finding help, or anything else, plan for it to take longer than you think. \u00a0Heck, this blog post is taking longer than I thought it would.<\/li>\n
  2. Know your runway.<\/strong> \u00a0It’s important to know your financial runway (both for the company and for yourself). \u00a0This is fairly easy to calculate–just find out your burn rate and your money in the bank. \u00a0If you are looking at your personal financial runway, don’t forget to allow some buffer for you to find a different job–typically you won’t be able to step from a cratered startup on Friday into a full time job on Monday. \u00a0However, more important than financial runway is emotional runway. \u00a0Talk about the stress with your spouse (if applicable), think about the other emotional difficulties you may encounter, and plan for some high highs and some low lows.<\/li>\n
  3. Extend your runway.\u00a0<\/strong> Again, for the financial runway, lower your burn rate as much as you can. \u00a0This will mean cutting back on spending and savings. \u00a0Make sure the family is on board. \u00a0Then you will look to find other sources of money to feed and clothe yourself. \u00a0This may include digging into savings, borrowing against assets (HELOCs work for this), borrowing from relatives, pitch competitions (TFC won two), selling assets, taking contract work, having a spouse who earns enough for the household, and\/or moonlighting.<\/li>\n
  4. Talk to your customer.<\/strong>\u00a0This was one of the great assets that one of my co-founders brought to the table. \u00a0She had deep domain expertise and had many connections to potential customers. \u00a0We had numerous customers give us feedback, including via interviews, a month long beta test, regular product advisory councils and surveys. \u00a0You will note that this point implies you can find\u00a0<\/strong>your customer and communicate with them in a cost effective manner. \u00a0Find where your customer congregates online. \u00a0If you don’t find a place, make one and invite your potential customers to join.<\/li>\n
  5. Everything is borked all the time.<\/strong>\u00a0In a startup, you just don’t have time to do everything correctly. \u00a0It can be embarrassing, but if you are building something that solves customer pain, and you’ve found the right early adopters<\/a>, the customers will stick around. \u00a0Just keep improving things. \u00a0And accept a certain amount of brokenness.<\/li>\n
  6. Know your market.<\/strong>\u00a0This is related to talking to your customer, as that is one fantastic way to learn about your market. \u00a0There are other ways too–market research, online reading, etc. \u00a0However, as you build your product, you will surprised by what your market wants. \u00a0For instance, we thought our market would want a better UX, but were surprised when someone said our v1 UX was “great”.<\/li>\n
  7. Make your own rules.<\/strong>\u00a0Know that my advice and rules above are based on my experience, with my co-founders, product and skillset, in this time. \u00a0You need to do the reading and figure out what your rules are.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I participated in a panel for Boulder Startup Week, but previous to the panel, thought I’d be giving a 15 minute presentation. \u00a0I was going to talk about rules for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,81],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2441","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-the-food-corridor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2441"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2442,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2441\/revisions\/2442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2441"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2441"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2441"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}