Start-ups That Made a Fortune by Bootstrapping No additional funding is involved in bootstrapping and hence the risk of failure is higher
By Aniketh Jain
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Bootstrapping is the process of self-starting a company without external financial aid or funding from third parties. The finances are self-arranged by the founders. Businesses tend to function well when they are backed up by sufficient financial aids, but bootstrapping is quite a risk to start with.
The outcomes of the strategies are unpredictable. Failures get costly to deal with and chances of taking risks gets unmanageable. Bootstrapping is a wise heads game; it's only through strong intellectual grounds and rational strategies that bootstrapped companies sustain bottleneck competition to emerge successful. It is quite surprising to encounter that a lot of companies have begun through the concept of bootstrapping.
Advantages of Bootstrapping
- Efficient Channelizing of Resources: Working with your own funds means that super-efficiency is extremely necessary. Founders are more aware, thrifty of resources and get things done on the lean business model.
- Zero Backup: No additional funding is involved in bootstrapping and hence the risk of failure is higher. However, the founders that cut through the edges through bootstrapping, use extremely skilled resources and plan contingencies to show commitment towards growth.
- Dilution of Operational Power: Without any funding, there are less likely that the decision making lies solely in the hands of founders. They have the impropriety to set cultures, functionalities and run the business in the desired direction.
- Building the Growth Foundation: Building a business successfully on the terms is a huge benefit to future investors. Investors, such as banks and ventures companies fund businesses that are have shown commitment towards growth.
- Opting Financial Strategies: Strategies such as asset re-financing and trade finance become part of the process when bootstrapping, due to the limited availability of funds.
- Precedence to Customers: As long as the company is bootstrapped, the priority is foremost to the customers. Investor hunting is not a botheration and the same time can be categorized in customer service.
Companies that Bootstrapped Their Way to Success
Numerous companies have bootstrapped and paved ways to reach heights and stand as leaders in their respective segments. They have not only proven that funding is not the utmost priority to run business successfully, but also reckoned the thought process of young minds to embrace entrepreneurship.
Quick Heal
Quick heal, which was incorporated in 1993, is an indian IT security solutions company that has grown globally with strong footprints in US, Middle East, Kenya and Japan. Bootstrapped organically, Quick heal now has up to 25 Million product installations and over 7 Million customer license base.
Zoho
Zoho was incorporated in 1996 started as a network management framework now has several suite applications that simplify the everyday communication at business level. They now cater their services to over 10,000 businesses successfully.
Zapstitch
Zapstitch founded in 2014, allows users to synchronize data across multiple cloud platforms seamlessly. Zapstitch is now used in more than 1200 online stores successfully. Zapstitch also raise 2 Million USD funding recently.
Wooqer
Wooqer founded in 2014, is a work enablement platform that creates easy and simple ways of everyday communication through web applications. Wooqer already caters to 100+ Clients and has over 1 Lakh users.
Fusion Charts
Launched in 2002, Fusion charts provide charts, widgets and graphs to cater easy access on all mobile devices and platform browsers. Fusion Charts caters to over 23,000 customers across 120 countries with over 80% companies listed in Fortune 500.
Conclusion
Bootstrapping is certainly not the hardest layback, but the challenging part is to achieve the company's objective through bootstrapping. With right vision, impeccable strategy and empowering leadership, many new entrepreneurs have laid down ways to achieve success through bootstrapping, and shattered the myth that funding alone leads to secured company's future.
