Before I dive into this post I want to make a few things clear:

• I am not referring to freelancers or folks in the service business. Frankly, if you are not bootstrapping (at least in the beginning) you are a moron. Grade A Idiot, as my dad used to say. (Not really, I just wish my dad would use cool lines like that, so I could tweet them and get a god damn show. Seriously, what is this world coming to?)
• I am not being “shocking” or “Dave McClure-ian” by using words like: bullshit, fucking, moron or venture capital.
• I am also not speaking specifically about the choice of taking (or not taking) investment in building a business.

What I am talking about is the fucking bullshit beliefs that seem to permeate the Bootstrapping world.

There is no special badge on Foursquare if you have bootstrapped your startup to success. There is no slight you are afforded because you bootstrapped. Venture capital is not evil. You are not good. You havent “beaten the odds.” You arent better, or worse, than other entrepreneurs.

The concept of bootstrapping is solid. To be clear, a bootstrapped business is one that is completely self-funded either by its founders or by the revenue it generates (usually a mix of both) and the expectation is that the growth of the company is usually slower than if the same business had received investment.

Im assuming that because entrepreneurs that have bootstrapped their businesses believe that have undertaken a Herculean effort, their success is somehow more valuable than the entrepreneur that took investment.

“Its all about the exit.” bootstrappers say. ” I would rather than 100% of a small exit, than 10% of a large exit.”

To that, I say, “cool. But, please shut the fuck up about it.”

I know that bootstrapping is hard. I know that there is even an art to it. Ive bootstrapped a business. I built a company on credit cards and had a successful exit. I get the awesome-ness of bootstrapping.

What I dont get is the attitude that mooching is awesome (Im sorry, I mean “free-sourcing”). I dont understand why exploiting young talent (oops, I meant “outsourcing to less experienced freelancers”) rocks. I am mystified how the concept of micromanaged control (damn, I mean “freedom from a board”) somehow ensures success.

Go be that entrepreneur that finances their own success, drives towards profitability quickly, and focuses on lean startup principles to accelerate your business.

Be proud of your ability to build a business with no outside help. Just dont be That Guy. Because those guys are not bootstrappers, they are dicks.

Related articles

• Bootstrapped, profitable & proud (marsdd.com)
• The Art of Bootstrapping: Funding Startups the hard Way – Part 1 (wolpers.posterous.com)
• Here’s How I Bootstrapped My Company To 25 Employees In 3 Countries In 4 Years (businessinsider.com)
• Five reasons to consider venture capital (jondale.com)
• Optimize for Happiness (Followup to my Startup School talk) (tom.preston-werner.com)

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I spend a lot of time talking to entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts. One of the most common questions I get is:

“Should I do <whatever>?”

And my answer?

“Doing always gives you more information than thinking.”

As entrepreneurs, we love to dream, to think about the impossible, to divine simple solutions to complex problems. The discussion of what could be dominate our days. We pitch venture capitalists and angels based on a vision of the future that is predicated on the prototypes and designs we have spent countless hours thinking about.

We entrepreneurs fall in love with possibility. We hire people based on their potential and willingness to take the risk to follow a dream. Our entire being is based on what will be, rather than what is.

We believe that we can do anything. We lay down plans. We pontificate. We challenge.

And then, at some point. Someone says:

“Prove it.”

So we get obsessed with metrics and stats. We look at the numbers in a million different ways. We wonder why users are being acquired as quickly as we thought, or not engaging as much as we believed. We see the bright side, even when things are looking bleak.

We fall back into what we are comfortable with, dreaming. We look at the problem with “new eyes.” We bring in new people that can “adjust paradigms.”

Or if things are going like gangbusters, we exclaim our confidence in the outcome. We assume that more of what we are doing will create more of a positive outcome, so we do more of it. We think about new ways to do more.

We fall back into what we are comfortable with, dreaming. We get excited and look at the problem with “new eyes.” We hire more people who can “expand the effort.”

At the core of most entrepreneurs is the dreamer. We prefer to think and model rather than just do.

The best thing a startup can do is to do. Build it, put it out there, collect data, and use the data to make decisions.

Even design can be driven entirely by data. Should the border be blue? Who knows? Just test it.

Most startups spend the majority of their time scoping out products and direction, and forget to include analytics. If they are a website, they throw in Google analytics at the last minute, and let it run. If they are an app, they think to themselves, “Oh well, our sales/engagement/ads will tell us if we are doing the right things.”

Thinking about doing implies a lack of action AND a lack of learning. As you build out your web app / gadget / mobile application / desktop app think about the pieces of data that are important to know, and those that you will want to know in the future. Implement the analytics and reporting early.

And then stop thinking all the time.

Yesterday, Mark Suster (if you are in a startup, thinking about startups, even just kinda like startups, you should be reading religiously) wrote a post about the importance of competitiveness in a successful entrepreneur.

I met Mark at last year’s Twiistup in LA, and we had some interesting discussions about startup ecosystems, and when it was time to raise money for Graphic.ly, Mark and GRP Partners, was high on my list.

I did a couple of pitches before meeting with Mark in LA to make sure that I had it down. I went in and sat down, excited to show Mark what we had built, and the vision we had crafted.

“Too early. Get traction. Gunna have to pass.”

Im pretty sure that Mark said other things that were extremely helpful, but those three short sentences sat in my brain as I left.

Now, I get it. We are early, we had no traction. We werent in a position to make it easy for Mark to champion us to his partners.

But, as I always do, I left the office thinking “Moron, you will be disappointed you passed.” Its not that I actually thought Mark, or the dozens of other folks that passed are ACTUALLY morons, I just think that their decision to pass was moronic.

Luckily we didnt need Mark or any of the other potential investors that passed to raise a round, but its something that constantly eats at the back of my brain.

Back to Mark’s post.

One attribute that I believe most VCs look for in entrepreneurs is competitiveness.  I know I do.  I like to work with people who hate to lose.  Anyone who has ever been around me when I’ve lost at anything I care about will tell you I’m not pleasant.  I’m not a poor loser at all.  It’s just that I stew on it.  I don’t recover easily.  I lose sleep.  If I have any angle of changing the outcome I will.  I replay things in my mind about why I lost and I try to correct my mistakes.

I dont lose. Losing is for losers. I hate everything about losing. Even the word. At the same time, I understand the difference between losing (“an ending”) and failure (“a process”), and embrace the process. But, I dont ever assume anything less than success. No competitor scares me. No market shift. No new startup. No new technology.

They dont scare me, because I know, given the opportunity, I will win. I believe in myself completely. Is that narcissist? Maybe. Arrogant? Probably. Confident? Absolutely.

But beating everyone else is not my driving factor. I sent this tweet out:

I think often that the best startup CEO’s mirror Michael Jordan. He was not satisfied with being the best basketball player of all time, but he wanted to change the game.

I dont look at Graphic.ly as being the best online digital comic store, but as a segment changer. As a company that is focused on creating a way for creators and publishers to directly connect with their fans that could redefine an industry. To help creators understand that digital is not just another distribution channel or form factor, but a way to completely re-imagine the art and story of comic books.

A couple of days ago, at lunch, I was asked if someone offered Graphic.ly an exit that allowed me personally to go home with a check for $5 million would I do it. I said no.

Now its easy to say “well, thats easy to say, but harder to do.” Im not independently wealthy. $5 million would change my life in many positive ways. But I wouldnt do it.

Mark responded to my tweet this morning with:

Why did I say I wouldnt take $5million today for Graphic.ly? Because I know that we will win. The exit is secondary. It will be there when it needs to be, but before we get there, I want to leave a mark (haha! just realized the pun…). I want to see creators doing amazing things with digital; I want to see everyone enjoying the art and storytelling of comics and sharing and engaging with that content; I want to see an industry that is uncertain of the benefit of digital embrace it in ways that are yet to be defined.

I guess thats the type of entrepreneur I am.