Bootstrap like stupidity or cowardice?

Recently, I suddenly thought, is not the desire to engage in bootstrapping an excuse for those people who are not really ready to do the real thing? Now I do not mean people involved in the construction of the next online store or small town portal. I mean people who proudly call what they do, “startups” and say that they will conquer the world.

UPD: It turns out that not everyone on this blog knows the meaning of the word bootstrap. Bootstrapping , bootstrapping , bootstrapping. There are startups who sit in the kitchens and slowly do their projects, which say that they will do everything themselves, who do not need investments or who believe that what they do is already worth millions of dollars.

Is it possible to conquer the world on bootstrapping?

The basis of my reasoning was approximately as follows:

• If you start to do a startup, then only to turn it into a really big business.
• There are no unique ideas, so the only real way to protect your idea is to realize it as quickly as possible and as large as possible.
• In order to build a big business, it is necessary from the very beginning to set a goal to build a big business. Putting this task aside for later is too much risk of being late.
• If you are engaged in building a business, you must first set a goal, and then look for resources for its implementation. Setting goals limited by current resources reduces the size of the future business and at the same time increases the possibility of being late.
• In any big business, one should not think about how to earn first money as quickly as possible, but about how to earn as much as possible during the whole process. In order to earn more, you usually have to spend a lot at first. But usually there is no such money when bootstrapping.
• Any Internet project is not only technological development, but also promotion and marketing. The costs of promotion and sales are usually far superior to development costs. And usually they don’t think about the need for these expenses, they don’t evaluate their real volumes, and as a result they think that everyone can do it themselves.
• The goal of a business shareholder is to earn as much money as possible. The author’s goal is to be the main thing (to do everything yourself, have a controlling stake, be a CEO, etc.). Personal ambitions almost always conflict with business goals: it is better to build Apple / Microsoft / Google and have 10% of the project than a small business in which to have 100%. And Apple, Microsoft and Google cannot be built without investment.

This leads to the conclusion that people who bootstrap are engaged in it for the following reasons:

• they cannot really estimate the costs of creating a product and its entry into the market: it means they are good developers, but bad businessmen;
• they are not ready to give up their current job and go headlong into their business: it means that they do not really believe in their project;
• they set a goal to start making some (not necessarily big) money: that means they don’t want to build a big business;
• they believe that they will manage to realize their idea faster than other people with teams and money: it means that they are prone to large and unjustified risks;
• they are not ready to give a share in the project in exchange for real investments that help build a big business: it means that the level of personal ambitions is too high and sooner or later it will come into conflict with the goals of the business for making money;

Any of these reasons, and especially all of them in combination, leads me to the idea that people who dream of a big business and bootstrapping are either stupid people who do not understand how a real business works, or cowards who do not believe in their own the project does not even think that it can get a big business out of it.

You won’t conquer the world at bootstrapping.

UPD: Continuation of the topic “Challenge bootstrapers”