BAP #1: Bootstrapping a business vs playing a business

Published May 29th, 2005 edit replace rm!

[ Just added this to my new series on Antipatterns ]

A mistake I myself have made as well as many other smalltime entrepreneurs is that we have wanted to appear like a business to early. Symptoms of this are things like:

  • Incorporating
  • Renting office space
  • Buying a fax machine (You know a business needs one)
  • Fancy stationary
  • Fancy graphic designers
  • Multiple fault tolerant high availability servers
  • Human resources officer (If you’re a startup and have one these you really are on the slippery slope)
  • etc. etc.

These are all fine at the correct phase of your business, but don’t waste these huge money suckers without an actual need.

I for example have rented a server which hasn’t really been in use since february. That is ¢49 out the door every month. Stupid really. Now is when I need it and I could have saved ¢147.

I also just bought business cards from VistaPrint because I’m going to Reboot in a couple of weeks and it’s handy to have at such events, but if not it would have been a waste of money at this time.

If you think about it one of the traps that leads to big businessitis is playing a business. This is often necessary if you want to attract venture capital, after all they want to know that you are serious and have things like a fax or an hr department. But really, I think the businesses who really succeed are the ones that focus on their business model and not how they appear outwards.

About me

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My name is Pelle Braendgaard. Pronounce it like Pelé the footballer (no relation). CEO of Notabene where we are building FATF Crypto Travel Rule compliance software.

Most new articles by me are posted on our blog about Crypto markets, regulation and compliance

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