Re: How Much Of Your Business Do You Want To Own?

Thomas — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:57:21 -0000

Thanks for sharing those insights!

I have read, heard, and seen many of bootstrapping models. Coming from the Bay Area, we have seen and heard it all. Indeed, it is much easier for a well-off entrepreneur to bootstrap. It's also easy for investors to talk about bootstrapping.

There is bootstrapping and there is bootstrapping! Y-Combinator article reminds me of YouTube story back in 2005: Couple of kids in their garage started a simple video upload and bootstrapped it, etc.... It was just too funny since the credit cards were black Amex, the garages were houses in Presidio and Atherton, and the friends-and-family was father-in-law Jim Clark.

I totally agree with the 100% vs. 20% ownership philosophy from an investor point of view. But an investor should never give an entrepreneur startup advice like how Steven did. No disrespect, but Steven has never been an entrepreneur. His resume is very light based on two jobs both Excel heavy. Real world is different. You, on the other hand, can and should give us advice. Because you have been an entrepreneur, has a business degree, and is looking for your next opportunity.

Also, I would like to point out that Y-Combinator and Garage Venture, both are great in giving entrepreneurs advice. Yet they both made more money from their books, Founders at Work and The Art of The Start, respectively, than healthy exit from their portfolio.

Re: How Much Of Your Business Do You Want To Own?

FN — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 07:49:54 -0000

Daniel, you raise a good point. The good news is that you don't need to have a bank account with a quarter million dollar balance to get going. There are many ways to financing a startup...Paul Graham has a good description of the options on his blog at:

http://paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html

Re: How Much Of Your Business Do You Want To Own?

Daniel Markham — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 07:27:34 -0000

That's a great idea.

Except for the part about having the few hundred k that the owner(s) needed to scale the business to begin with. Where's that come from? (speaking from experience)

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