1. Find people who share a dream

2. Connect them to each other

3. Take them where they want to go

Here's the secret.  You don't need everybody.

You need 1000 true fans.  People who will cross the street to join you in what you're doing.

A few questions for the journey:

Who are you upsetting?

Who are you connecting?

Who are you leading?

Very few people have a habit of delivering early.  Most people wait until the last minute to start on a project and then deliver right before (or more often right after) the deadline.  I've found this to be especially true with graphic designers and web developers, but I think most of us are guilty of this at some point.  

Here's a really good approach to deadlines I learned from Seth Godin during SAMBA. 

Don't use other people's deadlines and never do anything at the last minute. 

If someone gives you a deadline, don't use it.  Instead set your own deadline ahead of theirs.  Get in the habit of shipping early. You'll exceed the other person's expectations.

How do you treat deadlines?

In yesterday’s post I gave 5 reasons to bootstrap your business.  Today I wanted to take a look at reasons why you might want to consider taking outside money.

1. The people on the VC team.  This is probably the most important thing to consider when contemplating taking outside money…it’s more important than the actual money.  What expertise do they bring to the table?  Who can they introduce you to?  What doors can they help open?

2. You need to expand more quickly than bootstrapping allows.  It’s almost impossible to bootstrap your way into a nationwide (or global) product launch.  It’s just too expensive.

3. You need to scale quickly.  It would have been really difficult (perhaps impossible) to bootstrap facebook.  The scale of infrastructure and development that was needed far outstripped facebook’s ability to generate revenue early on. 

4. You’re building to be acquired (rather than to get cash flow positive).  So you’ve invented an amazing new technology that will change the game for (insert your favorite big dot com here).  In order to get enough market share to be noticed you need to offer your service for free and build a user base.  That can be really expensive.  If you can find VCs who believe in what you’re doing it makes sense to take their money so you can build your user base. 

5. Venture capital leads to more venture capital. Once you’ve got outside investors in the game with you, they have every incentive to see you succeed.  Don’t underestimate the importance of this.  As they introduce you to other VCs you’ll reap the benefits above over and over again (especially number 1).

1. When you take someone else’s money you answer to them.  This will force you to make decisions differently and sometimes not in the best interest of the company (your company). 

2. Constraints force creativity.  It’s really healthy to ask questions like how would we do this with less money?  How could we do this with no traditional marketing?  How could we do this with less employees?  

3. You might love what you’re doing and want to stick with it long term. Which leads us to the next point.

4. If you take in investors they’ll want an exit, that’s why they made the investment in the first place.  What happens if they want out and you want to stay in?

5. You don’t have anything to lose.  Seriously, this is a big deal.  You don’t have a ton of money to build a business, so you don’t have a lot to lose.  Big companies have everything to lose.  You don’t, you can take risks they can’t, take advantage of it.

Here’s a great free resource from Seth Godin on Bootstrapping.