In The Art of the Start, Guy Kawasaki (founder of garage.com, one of the earliest ‘business angels’) talks about bootstrapping your startup i.e. starting it on a shoe-string …
… he then proceeded to start his own Web 2.0 startup (perhaps only mildly successful, although he did manage to sell it for an undisclosed amount in 2009), called Truemors for only $12,000 (you can read about it, in this excellent post)!
Now, Guy could afford to spend millions, yet he chose to bootstrap, because it made good, commercial sense NOT to spend more.
For most startups, bootstrapping is a necessity, yet how little you spend up front may not have any detrimental effect as far as the success of your business goes, as the HotOrNot.com video above clearly demonstrates.
BTW: to prove that point, Hot or Not was (reportedly) acquired for $20 mill. not long after this video was shot.
My point: don’t let lack of money be your excuse for not starting your own business!
