WHAT IT TAKES TO BOOTSTRAP

I apologize for not being able to post the last few weeks I've been super busy teaching and getting my start ups minimum viable product ready for investors to try out.

Anyways I wanted to share what it's been like bootstrapping a start up. As you know it's been a few years from when I wanted to build a mobile game company all the way to where I am now building a line of competitive multiplayer arcade games designed to interact with a social tournament style web application. That's a lot of words to write and it's a been a challenging and fun project to work on.

Anyways to get to this point I had to learn to bootstrap. That's means I've had to make sacrifices and live like a poor student and learn to survive on very little. It's a great thing to go through and experience because you learn what's important. Before this I valued materials and after a while you learn that it's a life that doesn't make you happy. Now I value family, education, innovation, religion, things that money cannot buy.

It's only when I started following my dream of building a game changing company that life really became different for me. My perspective had changed. I no longer cared about cars, buying the most expensive stuff. It forced me to be around good supporting people, family members, and forced me to learn to survive on very little. There are a lot of free resources in the city to help you survive if you actually looked.

I went to a lot of free events to get free food like pizza, chicken, wine, h'orderves. A lot of entrepreneur centers had workshops that gave things like battery chargers and notebooks. Any time I needed a book I would go to the library. I used as many beta programs and trial periods to get the software I needed for my start up. Once you learn a lot of these things, you start to understand that you don't need that much money to survive. At first it took time to get used to but I realized if your resourceful enough you can solve a lot of problems. Too many people take the easy way out. By also taking a part time job you love you can earn money to live while using those survival methods and still build your company. No matter what there is sacrifice involved.

I've barely spent anything and I have a team of 20 people and a lawyer from RIM. My start up team consists of people from Microsoft, IMAX, Mercury Filmworks, RIM, SEGA Amusement, Waterloo, Seneca College and OPSEU Pension Trust. I've been able to problem solve to build great teams. Not everything happened all at once and I did have to go through my ups and downs. Bootstrapping requires you to live smart but it doesn't mean you have to go hungry. Hope this advice helps!!!

Best,

A.

THE STARTUP KIDS

I ended up wondering if there were any good start up movies after going to the theatre to see "Steve Jobs". While I liked the movie as a whole what I felt was missing was the fact that it didn't have a lot of the start up zest that the I look for in these type of stories. The movie was more of an abstract interpretation of Steve Job's persona with 3 connected acts through various accounts. It didn't really seem like the Walter Isaacson book was that much of an influence given that Sony had purchased the rights within weeks after his death.

I ended up Googling some terms to find the best start up movies to watch. Some top 10 lists had documentaries as oppose to movies. I decided to order a few documentaries and watched a few. One that particularly resonated with me is a documentary called "The StartUp Kids". It covers the CEO's recollections of being in a start up and bootstrapping a company. It was great to see and one particular part was inspiring especially the Co-Founder of VIMEO Zach Klein. What I particularly liked about him was his thinking and passion for life. He worked hard and bootstrappped to build VIMEO. Shortly after he sold the company to IAC and instead of building another company in tech, he ended up building his own house in the forest where he looks so free and happy in a place without distractions. He goes to New York as he pleases and he gets invited to all the tech parties but at the end of the day he goes home to this wooden cabin he built himself. I just loved the passion he has for building. The other entrepreneurs were so inspiring and I could definitely relate. 4 of them today are doing very well today (Drew Houston of Dropbox / Jessican Mah of Indinero / Brian Wong of Kiip / and Alexander Jung of Soundcloud). You can also learn some interesting lessons on selling your company to failing from Leah Culver of Pownce and Ben Way of Rainmakers. Definitely enjoyed the documentary and recommend it to all entrepreneurs.

Check out the StartUp Kids trailer: