Effectual Entrepreneurship by Dew Nick Read Stuart Wiltbank Robert Sarasvathy Saras Ohlsson Anne-Valérie & Saras Sarasvathy & Nick Dew & Robert Wiltbank & Anne-Valérie Ohlsson

Author:Dew, Nick, Read, Stuart, Wiltbank, Robert, Sarasvathy, Saras, Ohlsson, Anne-Valérie & Saras Sarasvathy & Nick Dew & Robert Wiltbank & Anne-Valérie Ohlsson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Economics, Finance, Business & Industry
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2010-12-13T16:00:00+00:00

This chapter and Chapters 14 and 16 will look to answer these questions and offer alternative views to the cash question.

In this chapter we will look at start-up financing—or how to bootstrap your venture without taking on external funding (or taking on as little as possible).

Chapter 14 will look at how you share ownership and control as other people invest with you.

Chapter 16 looks at the role of business plans in a more formal funding process —including venture capitalist funding and initial public offering/exit options.

To put bootstrapping into a very specific and detailed context, this chapter will take you through a real life case of a young couple who decided to launch their own business. At each breakpoint in the story, think back to the questions listed here, and think about how you would have approached the business, had you been the founder.

The base assumption throughout the case is, not surprisingly, that when you start your own business, cash in has to somehow be greater than or equal to cash out.

Bon voyage!

Tall boots may have a tab, loop or handle at the top known as a bootstrap, allowing one to use fingers or a tool to provide better leverage in pulling the boots on. The saying “to pull yourself up by your bootstraps” was already in use during the 1800s as an example of an impossible task. Bootstrap as a metaphor, meaning to better oneself by one’s own unaided efforts, was in use in 1922. This metaphor spawned additional metaphors for a series of self-sustaining processes that proceed without external help.

Bootstrapping in business is to start a business without external help or capital.

(Wikipedia, 2010)