Think Big, Start Small, Scale Fast & Enjoy A Deal From BootStrapToday!

Many startup founders have asked me this question - "Why BootStrapToday for startups?"; and I instinctively ask back – “Why not?”

The most common reasons that I get from the founders are:

1) Startups start with a team of 3-4 people and they don't need any kind of tools.

2) Startups can manage with some opensource software;they don't need to spend money on any tools!

Let me clear the air with the experience of my own start-up days. I’ll take up each point separately here.

1) Startups start with a team of 3-4 people and they don't need any kind of tools.

We started BootStrapToday with 3 founders. During the stealth days we were still employed and we used to meet just once in a week.We would share almost all of our thoughts on email or Google docs, and as a result all our thoughts would be scattered in the emails and on Google docs. It was quite frustrating to structure all the information during our brainstorming sessions. We were also doing a few prototypes, so we needed to share our code too. To do that we required some online version control system. We did not have any formal office space, so setting up a server was out of the question.

Many of my entrepreneur friends from the tech startups would agree here, that as a software startup, you cannot manage without a version control system if you want to collaborate on your ideas. We definitely need some tools before we can even start working on our idea. Time is always scarce for the entrepreneurs, and you cannot afford to waste it in managing the disorganized processes when such tools do exist, which can help you organize your version control and prototypes in a better way.

2) Startups can manage with some opensource software;they don't need to spend money on any tools!

Yes, I agree that as a startup you don't want to spend money on huge licensed software but with the advent of SaaS, leveraging these services have become damn cheap. So cost should not be a matter of such a big concern anymore. You must not get carried away with keeping the total spend under control so much that you sometimes even ignore the benefits that far outweigh the costs.

Let us now take up the perception with Opensource. Do you really think Opensource is free?

Studies suggest that administration and support cost of any software overshadows the initial cost of the software. So even if you get the open source software for free, it will have administration cost and support cost. Before you incur these costs you might want to answer the following questions:

1)   Is software administration and maintenance your core focus?

2)   Do you have the resources and competencies available in-house to administer and support opensource software?

We have been talking about lean organization and lean methodology of development for a long time now. What does lean organization stand for? I would say it means striving for the "Think Big, start small and scale fast" motto. This holds so true for the startups.

As a startup you have great ideas. But great ideas are worth 20% only. The rest is execution. In spite of having a great idea, it does not assure you of success if you get your execution wrong. A very important aspect of proper execution is getting organized as soon as possible, and not wasting the scarce resource of time on non-productive activities.

As a startup you are constrained by cash flow so it is required that you start small and quickly validate your idea with the real customers. Once you have validated your idea, you should quickly scale up in terms of sales. If required look for investors to help you in this process.

Why you should use BST and the deal: BootStrapToday can support ideas of your tech startup when you start small. It does not burn a hole in your pocket since it is available as SaaS. It takes less than 60 seconds to get started with BootStrapToday and you can scale your operations when you are ready to scale up. In short, it helps you focus on your big picture, scale fast depending upon your business growth, maintain a lean and small structure, and not make undue investments in human capital for maintaining your IT needs.

BootStrapToday Bronze plan is free to all companies who signup before 15th June, 2012. To avail this offer they need to send a mail to [email protected] with "YourStory.in" in the subject, once they signup for Bronze plan.

Image courtesy: Chinnovate

About the Guest Author:

Anand Agarwal is CEO & Co-founder of BootStrapToday. Follow him  @anandagar

Anand is an entrepreneur and visionary. Prior to founding Sensible Softwares Pvt. Ltd., Anand has over 10 years of experience working with Geometric in Product Lifecycle Management and handled some of the large-scale sensitive PLM initiatives including the ones of BMW (Germany), TARGET (USA), Nissan (Japan) and hence has the global exposure in handling project management of challenging, time and cost bound projects.