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In the startup scene, bootstrapping refers to launching and growing a company with the entrepreneur's own capital, without outside investment.
Derived from the phrase "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps", bootstrapping has the advantage of minimizing the risks of dependency, control, and other disputes that can arise when raising money from outside investors, while allowing the founder to run the business independently and in line with his or her original vision.
Take KeaBabies, for example, which has generated $20 million in sales in four years with just $23,000 in personal investment.
KeaBabies, a Singapore-based baby products company, generated $58 million in revenue last year and is said to be the hottest baby product brand in the U.S. these days.
It's notable that KiaBaby has gotten to where it is today with no outside investment and solely funded by its founders, Ivan Ong and his wife Jane Neo!
In the case of KiaBaby, it's a case of bootstrapping because the founders' desire to remain a husband-and-wife team was so strong that they stayed true to their original intentions when they started the company.
The founders' determination to create quality baby products and their strategy of prioritizing trusting relationships with customers, such as KiaBaby's 24/7 support, 365-day warranty, and parenting community, may have contributed to their success in the highly competitive U.S. baby products market.
One strategy for bootstrapping early-stage startup businesses is a lean strategy. Rather than building a single, perfect product from the ground up, lean means building multiple iterations of an MVP test, and iterating on different prototypes to find the product-market fit (PMF).
Written by underdogs
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