Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company with Almost No Money

This is a great book for anyone who has a business or is in the process of starting a business. Lots of sensible advice and helpful examples. My copy came quickly, in perfect shape and was very affordable. I'm now passing it on to other bootstrappers and think of myself as a bootstrapper.

This book is perfect for the person looking to start a new business. It is an introduction to the concept of bootstraping, not a step by step guide to starting a business. If you need a step by step guide to starting a business, you probably need more help than you can get from a book anyways. After reading this book, I used the concept of bootstrapping to start my own business that would have other wise been out of my reach. The book teaches a thought process outside of the traditional business approach, not only to starting a business, but for running a successful business for years to come. The review about the book not having any applicable information about running an online business, is way off. That guy missed the point of the book, this concept can be applied to any business. I highly recommend this book.

After reading a few of the other reviews for this book, I had to leave my own. First of all in response to the complaint about this book not being about "online businesses", this book is about starting a company without any outside investors, no angels, using only your own cash and whatever loan you could squeeze from the bank (otherwise known as "bootstrapping"). This book was not marketed as a book about online businesses so I don't understand where such an expectation could come from. I mean, just read the title. However, many of the examples in the book involve people who have online businesses and I found those examples to be interesting and illustrative of the points that were made in the book. We come from a background of very little business experience, but a lot of experience with technology. A lot of our business education has been through trial and error. If I had read this book earlier I would have avoided a lot of those errors. I haven't read Inc a lot or a lot of other business books so I don't know if the information in this book was recycled from those, but that is irrelevant to me. I only care if this book is a good one and in my opinion, it is. All the other books I have bought on starting and growing a tech business spent too many pages on how to get venture capital, how to find investors, how to please investors, how to solve problems with investors, etc. We have none of those problems. This was the first book that adressed the exact problems that we have had - about 10 problems that have caused us a lot of headache - that we would have avoided if we had read this book earlier. The book offered solutions that I had not thought of but wish I had. From my own experience with the problems that this book warns new business owners about, I think the advice in this book is astute. So, in conclusion, this book was everything I've been looking for. It is perfect for me because it taught me a lot of things I've needed to know.

"Bootstrapping Your Business" is a book that every would be or current entrepreneur must read. It is excellent. It offers practical and common-sense advice, such as "sell the product before you build it". Thus, it forces you to approach your business venture with a laser focus on customer acquisition, first and foremost. It also profiles numerous entrepreneurs in different industries who successfully bootstrapped their business ventures. This is extremely valuable, because you get an opportunity to learn how others succeeded at what you're trying to accomplish. There are alot of books regarding entrepreneurship on the market, but this is at the top of my list.

My approach to this book took on two personas one as President of the CRM Association where I am always reading books, articles and whitepapers on Customer Relationship Management trying to distinquish what to offer up to our membership. On the other hand I am an small business owner who just realized that "Bootstrapping" is exactly what I have been doing. What is constant in both personas is the role of the "customer" and what part they play in the success of any business, this success is prevalent in many ways whether it is revenue or assisting in creating and improving the product they receive. "Bookstrapping" strips away a number of formalities and stresses the basics, the blocking and tackling of starting a company with having control of the process. I found this a very enjoyable read and found myslef speaking out loud at concepts that were so apparent but seldom thought of because of the simplicity. I know Greg Gianforte and I know of his company RightNow Technologies and I have witnessed his "hands on" approach. After reading this book I know why he has been so successful by keeping his eyes, ears and hands on his customers.....a CEO leading from the top....what a concept.