Built In Chicago, Technori and Tie Midwest got together and organized a panel of four entrepreneurs who bootstrapped their companies and built them to very significant sizes. I thought the panel was great and started taking notes mid way through that I thought I would share.
The people on the panel were
Shawn Riegsecker, Founder and President of Centro
Arvind J. Singh, Co-Founder, President and CEO of Utopia, Inc.
Ed Scanlan, Founder and CEO of Total Attorneys
Andrew Sieja, Founder and President of kCura
Brandon Cruz, President & CTO of Norvax
My notes and observations
- They all founded their companies with no venture money
- All of them started as service business and used that as a jumping off point for a product business
- They all went through very difficult periods for multiple years where they almost ran out of cash
- The told stories about not having enough money for flights, for payroll or hotels
- They all felt strongly that one of the founders must REALLY know how to sell
- One of their key motivations for starting their business is they did not want to work for someone else.
- When they started their business they did not have a master plan. All of them succeeded by being opportunistic and listening to their customers.
- You have to really believe in yourself if you want to be an entrepreneur
- One of the greatest advantages to bootstrapping a company is flexibility. You can change course without having to convince your investors. When you have less cash you are much less likely to get out in front of your skis and spend too much. Raising money can have subtle but significant pressures on the founder to make decisions that are not good for the long term health of the business.
- Ed told a moving and compelling story about how he survived being sued in 47 states all at once.
- Andrew talked about meeting a stranger pool side who helped to save his company
- Arvind talked about having to delay payroll and how hard this communication was to his employees
- Shawn talked about having the bank pull the line of credit when he needed it the most and convincing them to give him 60 more days.
- Brandon talked about having great friends who supported him through the beginning--how they nearly shut down the business but received a 30K commission check (from a side business) that kept them afloat...they now repay their friends.
This panel was great because it was real, unvarnished and straight from the horses mouth. The message that came through loud and clear is that bootstrapping a company is hard, requires huge amounts of patience and perseverance and you should expect to be tested to your limits along the way.
Thanks to all the panelists for sharing their stories. Watch the video today.
