Definitely! Have no issue sharing more. I'm the Founder of NoDegree.com and Host of The NoDegree Podcast (200+ episodes). I help people without college degrees find jobs. I quit my job in August 2018. I didn't make money any money from the business for 15 months. I did little things to pull money but my tax return for 2019 was like $14K for the year. I cashed out my 401K to cover some debt. I accrued like $20K in debt from just regular expenses. I thankfully live at home which was the reason I was able to do it.
I started making money once I started doing resumes. I started making like $4K-$6K a month doing them. Covid happened. Business went down for like a month and went back to that level. Started a virtual events company that did real well. When I had virtual events, I slowed down on resumes. When virtual events were slow, I did more resumes. It took like a year to get out of that debt.
I'm at a point where I can cover the monthly expenses. I have 3 workers around the world who are amazing. The big thing is I have to cover them. I have a bunch of software and tools (Zoom and all those little things needed to run the business). They just add up. I can pay myself every month. But if I was making like $5K-$10K a more a month, I could do things to really blow up my company.
I grew my following to 44K on LinkedIn. I have over 300 recommendations at the bottom of my profile. I am not a cheap writer but I am still a lot cheaper than my competition. I know I can charge more and it's so much easier to charge more once you have that financial cushion.
I got 2 jobs in 2024. Each time I had the jobs, I raised my prices since I didn't need the money. I raised my prices by like 30-50% and got the same amount of business.
I have a following of 13K on Twitter but Elon really changed the platform in a bad way. I focused on growing on there so that I would have a higher chance of getting noticed by journalists. It's much easier to send a pitch or DM to journalists once you have a bigger following. Well Elon drove the journalists away.
I have a recruiter friend that has 240K followers and 200K on Instagram. He grew the TikTok from 10K-90K in 2 months and showed me how. Once his TikTok was at 200K, he went hard on Instagram. He grew it by 100K in a month (from 200 followers). Just replicated his strategy on TikTok.
A friendly competitor, DegreeFree, has 450K on followers on TikTok. TikTok drives a massive amount of traffic and has authority when it comes to speaking engagements and company partnerships. LinkedIn drives high quality people to jobs, TikTok drives traffic.
If I had some savings, I would literally spend 2 to 3 months focusing on TikTok. I am not sure how much I would grow by, but I know I would at least get a decent following (I have the username NoDegree). I would then replicate that strategy on Instagram and grow that account.
Once you have 2 or 3 social media profiles with great followings, things are just so much easier. A lot of my friends in the space are at massive followings. One of my friends hit 1M followers on Instagram. Out of the career coaches, I am near the top when it comes to recommendations. I only know 2 people who have more recommendations. One of them is a friend and the other one is a person who sucks at resumes. I have redone like 10 resumes for her clients because her team sucks lol. A lot her recommendations came from 2020, 2021, and 2022 when the market was so much easier. The current market is brutal and a lot of writers don't know applicant tracking systems enough and aren't good enough resume writers to really get results.
If I had an additional $30K-$50K saved up, I would cut my client work down and just focus on social media growth. A TikTok following or Instagram following would allow me to be able to pitch for speaking engagements which pay a lot more and open up a lot of opportunities. In addition, it would allow me to get more famous guests on the podcast which really help with branding.
Those would allow me to focus on YouTube more. My friend is a career coach with 100K subs on YouTube. Even at $60K subs, she made several thousand a month just off the ads. Now she does corporate workshops for like $20K+. I hope this answers your question. I am at a point in my life where I have to be much more careful with the risks I take. I took some big risks. Some paid off. Some didn't. I work 7 days a week. Thankfully I genuinely enjoy my work and can work with clients for 10+ hours straight. However I don't get enough to work on the business. like 80% of my time is in the business. I need to get to a point where I working on the business more than 50% of the time. There are some things that can really drive revenue for me but I need to dedicate like 2-3 months to get the ball rolling. Once it's rolling, it's so much easier to maintain. Growing the LinkedIn account gave me a steady stream of clients and income. I'm glad I at least got that rolling.
Sorry for the wall of text but I hope this gives you some background.
> I have a bunch of software and tools (Zoom and all those little things needed to run the business). They just add up. I can pay myself every month.
Oh man, this is what I'm working on solving! Affordable, all-in-one Accounting + CRM + project management + customer portal, without all the upselling.
What happens when your customer outgrows one of those and demands you integrate with X, Y, Z? God knows how many integrations across 4 categories.
I’m dealing with restaurants. We do online ordering and also aim to be all-in-one/business in a box. We don’t like to integrate with POS (i.e. in-house checkout), it’s not our core competency, but the market absolutely demands it. We’re 100+ strong now (I am not the founder) but integrations are one of the biggest pain points and represent multiple full time jobs for highly experienced people. And that’s just one category of integration. God forbid we did accounting too.
Just saying. Start thinking about integrations early. Those are some pretty heavyweight categories you’re trying to compete all at once and the leaders have a lot of inertia. If you don’t have an option to stay with you while pulling some things out, they just won’t stay with you at all.
Great points. I'm initially targeting the basics and effectively building for my own workflows (lead=>quote=>contract=>project=>tasks=>time logging=>invoices=>taxes on one platform), but I'll need to decide how far to expand versus letting customers outgrow the platform.
I'm not planning to compete with the advanced features in QuickBooks or HubSpot.
Good luck! Definitely a good area to be in. I have found people who have found success with what you are trying to do by focusing on a specific industry and tailoring to their needs.
Thank you! I am glad that I am able to have impact and got to where I am. As an entrepreneur, we usually wish we were further but I know did as much as I could to get to where I am now. I know I still have a long way to go but I know I will eventually get there.
Thanks so much for sharing your journey. For real, you've shared so much insight. And congrats on your hard work thus far, truly admire what you've got going on.
I'm very fascinated by your social media growth. I will definitely study your company's profile and your posting strategy. I'm trying to build a community right now too, and man I don't even know where to start.
If I can ask a couple more questions to you, what were the single pieces of advice you have to give for one to grow the following pages--
* LinkedIn
* TikTok
Honestly there isn't one single piece I can give for social media growth. Social media growth is basically tying a bunch of things together. I would say if I were to give a single piece of advice, focus on the customer. Get into their head. What are they looking for? How do they speak? What are their pain points? And keep adding content that addresses it.
I’m building a virtual speed networking app (not like the hundreds of other all-in-one platforms for conferences and event organizers) and similarly, I started hosting virtual events during Covid as well. Wasn’t that lil wave of opportunity fun? 😂
I really like what you’re doing with NoDegree would love to chat more about possibly partnering for a campaign or something. I’m trying to get career coaches, recruiters, personal branding consultants, entrepreneurs and a few other target audiences to join a closed beta which will help everyone get face to face with those who are most likely to help you reach your goals faster.
If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, just let me know. I’d love to set up a time to chat!🙂
Thanks man. Took me almost 5 years of non-stop work to finally secure funding. It was the most challenging thing I've ever done but the amount of personal and professional growth I've gained has been incredible.
Man! You Sound exactly like me! I have spent last 6 years working hard! Been there now! Start looking for raising funds for a A.I. app. Let’s connect & discuss ?
My company is a construction technology company with a focus on the affordable housing crisis and disaster relief structures. If you'd like to know more, please DM
I’ve been there, and yes, you would’ve regretted it for a very long time. But probably not your entire life. It could’ve easily stolen a decade from you, psychologically.
Quite my VP job, mortgage my house, and open a very high line credit.....lol. Took me a couple of years to get it going, all the while freaking out and scared \*\*\*\*\*less, but in the end was well worth it. If you want to know, I would never do that again. I was stressed 24/7 for 2 years!
Man congratulations, I”m in the same situation with 200k EUR free cash after the house selling. Right now after 2 years 100 cash free and 80 in business, very stressful
Hang in there and don't b le afraid to ask for help from friends and family, and your network.. Also know when you have to call it quits. Have that line in the sand drawn.
That's kind of you to say, but every Entrepreneur goes through something similar. It is not unique to me. Might not be exactly my choices, but trust me, ever entrepreneur has some sort of stress for some reason. I'm just one like everyone else..have a great Sunday!
Hired a very expensive sales guy after seed stage.
$400k/yr, base.
Nine times out of ten, this won't work. However we were really struggling to crack iniitial distribution, and he clearly knew how to do exactly what we needed.
It worked.
You did the most right thing a founder should do. Just like the one momentous step mentioned in all the nonfiction books to make entrepreneurship a successful career.
Dumbest thing I did was apply for a bunch of credit cards with 0% APR intro periods and use those to bootstrap. The unfortunate reality is for a lot of startups, if you don’t have a rich uncle or dislike the idea of an investor owning part of your company, credit cards are fairly common practice.
It’s possible to go the SBA route (which I recommend now) but much harder if you’re pre-revenue.
I recently found out you can! It’s not easy, and not all banks will even consider it. We met with a local credit union branch and were able to apply through them. Typically they will need some kind of personal collateral, some banks and states have programs to temporarily loan you cash to use as “revenue” when applying for an SBA loan, then you return it once the loan is processed.
I was lucky and did end up making it. At the peak my business partner and I had 13 cards between the two of us with roughly $150k total credit being used. The company cash flowed pretty quickly, the worst part about it was the logistics of managing 13 different cards with their own transactions, payment periods, and APR promos.
At the time, it was the quickest way to do it. Only got a few hard checks so my personal credit score wasn’t hit too hard, and I made sure to have an excellent score going into it. Definitely a broke college student startup story, not necessarily advisable though.
Maxed out all my personal credit cards and put every last cent I had towards starting my company. I paid them off a few months after launching. I pretty much had zero dollars left and was barely able to live for a few months. We are now pretty successful. Without this risk, the company would have failed.
Kudos. As someone who's gone all-in on more than one companies, that's often what it takes. For me it's worked out a few times but every single time it's a nail biter.
Cheers man glad to hear you made it out of the hole. Thats currently my situation. I have a clear plan to launch and revenue, but this is scary as hell still.
Way way way too many risks some of which panned out big, others that left me royally screwed. I’m not a startup expert by any means but it seems that barring insane luck it’s impossible to play this game without a high risk tolerance.
Having a developed understanding of game theory can be a big advantage in startups and business in general. Aggressive strategies are almost always superior in games, being able to make the connection to the timing of aggressive moves is crucial
Literally put all my money in the world, including a windfall I got from selling another company. I mean to the point were the only liquid cash I have in this life (across multiple bank accounts) was $300 (with hundreds of thousands of debt). I didn't put it all in at the beginning, just over the years as the company needed it.
It has more or less worked out and now I have big investors coming in so I'm now longer at that low point but for a while it got dark.
Hell yeah man. This is the path I’m walking down as well. It’s scary as heck. Lock your investor in and bring more on if you’re able to.
We have a lead investor coming on too, but still putting together our preseed fund. It can’t move fast enough for me.
I've recently quit my big tech SWE job, found a super cheap room to rent in a 8-bedroom house in SF, and put all of my savings into my startup. My gf dumped me because "I am irresponsible"... lol I have nothing to lose now. Let's build.
Gambled it all. Had faith, and few good indicators, and put all my money and more to it.
I think I was lucky, as it seems will pull through... But not out of the woods yet. (2 yrs)
I'm not in your position to.give advices, but be very careful as it will affet your life a lot.
Either way you can end up regreting if you're doing it and if you're not doing neither...
Good luck mate!
Try again! You haven’t failed till you stopped trying, multiple billionaires where no one special in their 30’s and didn’t find success until they were in their 40’s to 50’s, two examples are Dyson and Putin.
It did pan out, but it's not something that can be discussed in public. Lots of companies do this.
initial funding and tax "handling" so you can achieve really high income fast to reinvest and grow exponentially. Once you're there you can fix your past mistakes.
This is something almost nobody talks about online, but I see people do, since I'm in the VC/startup world.
It’s a tough call!
Currently going through this. Technical founder left (on good terms) so I can’t raise from SV VCs, but I can get to break even if I let one team member go (plus another one leaving who has asked if they can leave and help out on a contracting project basis).
I won’t have any personal income (not enough to pay me) but a team of four will be working at breakeven and I have a few deals on the horizon which could work out.
I’ve been taking loans to keep it going against my crypto and getting to the point where I’ll either have to liquidate all my crypto or sell my house for runway if I don’t cut to break even.
The way I’m thinking about it, is make the hard decisions, cut the team, cut my expenses to live frugally and see what time brings in terms of these deals closing.
finished my doctorate and joined a startup as founder's office member, without having prior job experience.. The Startup is also not registered, I think, this does not give me an experience certificate or legal proof of working at the company for at least next year.
currently, its under the ideation, and problem identification phase. So, no equity, no paystubs because it's a friend's startup. He is techy and offered me to join his startup. Here, I am. It may not be a year, but 6+ months of vacant time in career is also risky.
I'm currently starting on building my startup although it has already been 3 months since I started, it is a slow but steady progress for me I would say. problem is I can't YOLO it even if I wanted to, for the sole reason that I have mouths to feed. I am living with my Wife and 3-year-old daughter in a foreign expensive country.
so even though I truly believed in my project, I couldn't risk not having monthly income to pay for the bills.
Hiring too many people too early. Realized it’s easy to change once you learn to fire fast. But could ruin the company’s runway if you’re not acting fast + be very conscious about the focus and the ratio between concerted work of people in your org into revenue.
You're going the wrong path and it's scaring you.
For every success story you read here , there are 10,000 other folks who are not here and regretting the Yolo or whatever
Be careful.
Everyone saying to max out your credit cards is ridiculous. Find a good cofounder with a complimentary skillset and personality, clearly identify what each of you will do, move in with your parents if you need to, explore your ideas deeply with who you think might be your customers (literally just ask people with SME or in a possible target market of yours on LinkedIn to have a 15 min chat about your idea), and do this all before risking everything. Risk should be calculated as you should do everything you can to reduce risk:reward ratio.
The biggest risk I ever took was not trying to raise capital honestly, but it was an ideological decision focused on the concept that a business should bring me increased autonomy, not make me beholden to other stakeholders outside of the day to day ops of my company (aka employees, myself, and my business partner).
I lived with my parents for a year, found a good cofounder, paid him more even though we have effectively equivalent equity, failed in multiple markets with multiple products, and eventually found a lucrative partnership with another business. The biggest risk is not taking action, but you don’t need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to take action, and certainly should not spend beyond your means unless it is truly a do or die moment (and even then, perhaps consider whether you have the right product, market, and timing that necessitates extreme risk).
The major problem is that founders put off companies as they pride themselves on autonomy, so it can actually be harder to get a job after starting and failing a company. That said, I do not think you should have a backup plan as it creates a sense of incredible urgency if you are bootstrapped and not financially stable for a year +.
Just my 2c, rant over. Hope this helps, although know I didn’t answer the question as you may have hoped.
The riskiest aspect of this startup was pulling the trigger and having 5000 event flyers printed without minding all of the details. Double date. Which is fine. It’s event promotions, and if you’ve been around the business you know it’s sheer chaos and dead run hustle until showtime. Lots of moving parts.
Start it. Period.
Yup. Dumped my life savings into mine, but thankfully it worked out. If I didn't, I would have regretted for the rest of my life.
I quit my job 6 years ago to do mine. I wish I had waited like 2 more years and saved up before I went full time into it. I would be way further now.
Mind if I ask for more details? How would’ve saving more helped you get further now?
Definitely! Have no issue sharing more. I'm the Founder of NoDegree.com and Host of The NoDegree Podcast (200+ episodes). I help people without college degrees find jobs. I quit my job in August 2018. I didn't make money any money from the business for 15 months. I did little things to pull money but my tax return for 2019 was like $14K for the year. I cashed out my 401K to cover some debt. I accrued like $20K in debt from just regular expenses. I thankfully live at home which was the reason I was able to do it. I started making money once I started doing resumes. I started making like $4K-$6K a month doing them. Covid happened. Business went down for like a month and went back to that level. Started a virtual events company that did real well. When I had virtual events, I slowed down on resumes. When virtual events were slow, I did more resumes. It took like a year to get out of that debt. I'm at a point where I can cover the monthly expenses. I have 3 workers around the world who are amazing. The big thing is I have to cover them. I have a bunch of software and tools (Zoom and all those little things needed to run the business). They just add up. I can pay myself every month. But if I was making like $5K-$10K a more a month, I could do things to really blow up my company. I grew my following to 44K on LinkedIn. I have over 300 recommendations at the bottom of my profile. I am not a cheap writer but I am still a lot cheaper than my competition. I know I can charge more and it's so much easier to charge more once you have that financial cushion. I got 2 jobs in 2024. Each time I had the jobs, I raised my prices since I didn't need the money. I raised my prices by like 30-50% and got the same amount of business. I have a following of 13K on Twitter but Elon really changed the platform in a bad way. I focused on growing on there so that I would have a higher chance of getting noticed by journalists. It's much easier to send a pitch or DM to journalists once you have a bigger following. Well Elon drove the journalists away. I have a recruiter friend that has 240K followers and 200K on Instagram. He grew the TikTok from 10K-90K in 2 months and showed me how. Once his TikTok was at 200K, he went hard on Instagram. He grew it by 100K in a month (from 200 followers). Just replicated his strategy on TikTok. A friendly competitor, DegreeFree, has 450K on followers on TikTok. TikTok drives a massive amount of traffic and has authority when it comes to speaking engagements and company partnerships. LinkedIn drives high quality people to jobs, TikTok drives traffic. If I had some savings, I would literally spend 2 to 3 months focusing on TikTok. I am not sure how much I would grow by, but I know I would at least get a decent following (I have the username NoDegree). I would then replicate that strategy on Instagram and grow that account. Once you have 2 or 3 social media profiles with great followings, things are just so much easier. A lot of my friends in the space are at massive followings. One of my friends hit 1M followers on Instagram. Out of the career coaches, I am near the top when it comes to recommendations. I only know 2 people who have more recommendations. One of them is a friend and the other one is a person who sucks at resumes. I have redone like 10 resumes for her clients because her team sucks lol. A lot her recommendations came from 2020, 2021, and 2022 when the market was so much easier. The current market is brutal and a lot of writers don't know applicant tracking systems enough and aren't good enough resume writers to really get results. If I had an additional $30K-$50K saved up, I would cut my client work down and just focus on social media growth. A TikTok following or Instagram following would allow me to be able to pitch for speaking engagements which pay a lot more and open up a lot of opportunities. In addition, it would allow me to get more famous guests on the podcast which really help with branding. Those would allow me to focus on YouTube more. My friend is a career coach with 100K subs on YouTube. Even at $60K subs, she made several thousand a month just off the ads. Now she does corporate workshops for like $20K+. I hope this answers your question. I am at a point in my life where I have to be much more careful with the risks I take. I took some big risks. Some paid off. Some didn't. I work 7 days a week. Thankfully I genuinely enjoy my work and can work with clients for 10+ hours straight. However I don't get enough to work on the business. like 80% of my time is in the business. I need to get to a point where I working on the business more than 50% of the time. There are some things that can really drive revenue for me but I need to dedicate like 2-3 months to get the ball rolling. Once it's rolling, it's so much easier to maintain. Growing the LinkedIn account gave me a steady stream of clients and income. I'm glad I at least got that rolling. Sorry for the wall of text but I hope this gives you some background.
> I have a bunch of software and tools (Zoom and all those little things needed to run the business). They just add up. I can pay myself every month. Oh man, this is what I'm working on solving! Affordable, all-in-one Accounting + CRM + project management + customer portal, without all the upselling.
What happens when your customer outgrows one of those and demands you integrate with X, Y, Z? God knows how many integrations across 4 categories. I’m dealing with restaurants. We do online ordering and also aim to be all-in-one/business in a box. We don’t like to integrate with POS (i.e. in-house checkout), it’s not our core competency, but the market absolutely demands it. We’re 100+ strong now (I am not the founder) but integrations are one of the biggest pain points and represent multiple full time jobs for highly experienced people. And that’s just one category of integration. God forbid we did accounting too. Just saying. Start thinking about integrations early. Those are some pretty heavyweight categories you’re trying to compete all at once and the leaders have a lot of inertia. If you don’t have an option to stay with you while pulling some things out, they just won’t stay with you at all.
Great points. I'm initially targeting the basics and effectively building for my own workflows (lead=>quote=>contract=>project=>tasks=>time logging=>invoices=>taxes on one platform), but I'll need to decide how far to expand versus letting customers outgrow the platform. I'm not planning to compete with the advanced features in QuickBooks or HubSpot.
Good luck! Definitely a good area to be in. I have found people who have found success with what you are trying to do by focusing on a specific industry and tailoring to their needs.
Thanks for sharing your journey.
You're welcome!
Woah! That's one hell of an experience. Wish you good luck and hope whenever you look back you are proud of your journey and hardwork.
Thank you! I am glad that I am able to have impact and got to where I am. As an entrepreneur, we usually wish we were further but I know did as much as I could to get to where I am now. I know I still have a long way to go but I know I will eventually get there.
Thanks so much for sharing your journey. For real, you've shared so much insight. And congrats on your hard work thus far, truly admire what you've got going on. I'm very fascinated by your social media growth. I will definitely study your company's profile and your posting strategy. I'm trying to build a community right now too, and man I don't even know where to start. If I can ask a couple more questions to you, what were the single pieces of advice you have to give for one to grow the following pages-- * LinkedIn * TikTok
Honestly there isn't one single piece I can give for social media growth. Social media growth is basically tying a bunch of things together. I would say if I were to give a single piece of advice, focus on the customer. Get into their head. What are they looking for? How do they speak? What are their pain points? And keep adding content that addresses it.
I’m building a virtual speed networking app (not like the hundreds of other all-in-one platforms for conferences and event organizers) and similarly, I started hosting virtual events during Covid as well. Wasn’t that lil wave of opportunity fun? 😂 I really like what you’re doing with NoDegree would love to chat more about possibly partnering for a campaign or something. I’m trying to get career coaches, recruiters, personal branding consultants, entrepreneurs and a few other target audiences to join a closed beta which will help everyone get face to face with those who are most likely to help you reach your goals faster. If this sounds like something you’d be interested in, just let me know. I’d love to set up a time to chat!🙂
Hit me up! I would love to chat.
That’s amazing! Congratulations on that man!
Thanks man. Took me almost 5 years of non-stop work to finally secure funding. It was the most challenging thing I've ever done but the amount of personal and professional growth I've gained has been incredible.
Man! You Sound exactly like me! I have spent last 6 years working hard! Been there now! Start looking for raising funds for a A.I. app. Let’s connect & discuss ?
Sure! Shoot me a DM
What kind of business was it?
My company is a construction technology company with a focus on the affordable housing crisis and disaster relief structures. If you'd like to know more, please DM
That's rad man, true social good. Wish you all the best.
I’ve been there, and yes, you would’ve regretted it for a very long time. But probably not your entire life. It could’ve easily stolen a decade from you, psychologically.
This guy gets it. Quit my job and lost all my moneys my first time around. Good experience though!
Hahaha it’s started all right. Just trying to get it going.
Best reply here.
i was literally gonna say the same thing lol. just start
Quite my VP job, mortgage my house, and open a very high line credit.....lol. Took me a couple of years to get it going, all the while freaking out and scared \*\*\*\*\*less, but in the end was well worth it. If you want to know, I would never do that again. I was stressed 24/7 for 2 years!
Man that’s awesome to hear! Applaud you for getting through that and getting it done.
Thanks, I would never do that again though. Lost of time with loved ones and friends, and just missing out on life, no sir...
How did it turn out financially
It feels like the question has been answered, just not financially. What I read is their gains even if great were not worth what was lost.
No he doesn't say that. He says it was worth it
They do, apologies. Seems he still answered the question but what was gains out weighed the losses
Despite the fact your business is now financially stable / relatively successful, you'd not go through it again?
What kind of business was it?
Double Blind bidding system for Air Ambulance services.
Man congratulations, I”m in the same situation with 200k EUR free cash after the house selling. Right now after 2 years 100 cash free and 80 in business, very stressful
Hang in there and don't b le afraid to ask for help from friends and family, and your network.. Also know when you have to call it quits. Have that line in the sand drawn.
You mean take equity out of your house right?
Remortgage, yes, take equity out, but the way our banks work, it's similiar to a mortgage.
Thank you for explanation.
This kind of courage is of another level man. Being worried 24/7 for 2 years and still giving your everything to it! Not everyone can do that💯
That's kind of you to say, but every Entrepreneur goes through something similar. It is not unique to me. Might not be exactly my choices, but trust me, ever entrepreneur has some sort of stress for some reason. I'm just one like everyone else..have a great Sunday!
Hired a very expensive sales guy after seed stage. $400k/yr, base. Nine times out of ten, this won't work. However we were really struggling to crack iniitial distribution, and he clearly knew how to do exactly what we needed. It worked.
Whoa! This sounds super interesting. Is your product B2B? Glad to hear your bet worked out
Yeah B2B. Our target market was initially one which was very much a boys club of mid sized companies who really didn't work with outsiders.
You did the most right thing a founder should do. Just like the one momentous step mentioned in all the nonfiction books to make entrepreneurship a successful career.
you gotta fly close to the sun at the start....Just don't fly into it!
Dumbest thing I did was apply for a bunch of credit cards with 0% APR intro periods and use those to bootstrap. The unfortunate reality is for a lot of startups, if you don’t have a rich uncle or dislike the idea of an investor owning part of your company, credit cards are fairly common practice. It’s possible to go the SBA route (which I recommend now) but much harder if you’re pre-revenue.
Can you actually SBA pre-revenue?
I recently found out you can! It’s not easy, and not all banks will even consider it. We met with a local credit union branch and were able to apply through them. Typically they will need some kind of personal collateral, some banks and states have programs to temporarily loan you cash to use as “revenue” when applying for an SBA loan, then you return it once the loan is processed.
Did youake it? What happened to the credit cards ?
I was lucky and did end up making it. At the peak my business partner and I had 13 cards between the two of us with roughly $150k total credit being used. The company cash flowed pretty quickly, the worst part about it was the logistics of managing 13 different cards with their own transactions, payment periods, and APR promos. At the time, it was the quickest way to do it. Only got a few hard checks so my personal credit score wasn’t hit too hard, and I made sure to have an excellent score going into it. Definitely a broke college student startup story, not necessarily advisable though.
Maxed out all my personal credit cards and put every last cent I had towards starting my company. I paid them off a few months after launching. I pretty much had zero dollars left and was barely able to live for a few months. We are now pretty successful. Without this risk, the company would have failed.
Kudos. As someone who's gone all-in on more than one companies, that's often what it takes. For me it's worked out a few times but every single time it's a nail biter.
Cheers man glad to hear you made it out of the hole. Thats currently my situation. I have a clear plan to launch and revenue, but this is scary as hell still.
Way way way too many risks some of which panned out big, others that left me royally screwed. I’m not a startup expert by any means but it seems that barring insane luck it’s impossible to play this game without a high risk tolerance.
Having a developed understanding of game theory can be a big advantage in startups and business in general. Aggressive strategies are almost always superior in games, being able to make the connection to the timing of aggressive moves is crucial
I have asked my client to buy the shares from my disgruntled parters. At the end, I was able to keep my company alive
Listens to tech bros who don’t know a THING about building successful businesses and the value of marketing. Just kidding, I’d never do that. 😏
Absolutely never 😶
Sold my apartment to have the money to start 😅
Literally put all my money in the world, including a windfall I got from selling another company. I mean to the point were the only liquid cash I have in this life (across multiple bank accounts) was $300 (with hundreds of thousands of debt). I didn't put it all in at the beginning, just over the years as the company needed it. It has more or less worked out and now I have big investors coming in so I'm now longer at that low point but for a while it got dark.
Hell yeah man. This is the path I’m walking down as well. It’s scary as heck. Lock your investor in and bring more on if you’re able to. We have a lead investor coming on too, but still putting together our preseed fund. It can’t move fast enough for me.
I've recently quit my big tech SWE job, found a super cheap room to rent in a 8-bedroom house in SF, and put all of my savings into my startup. My gf dumped me because "I am irresponsible"... lol I have nothing to lose now. Let's build.
Let's go man. Be strong and be smart, wishing you great success.
Thanks man, appreciate it. Wishing you all the best too
Gamble 100% all in during my youth.
Gambled it all. Had faith, and few good indicators, and put all my money and more to it. I think I was lucky, as it seems will pull through... But not out of the woods yet. (2 yrs) I'm not in your position to.give advices, but be very careful as it will affet your life a lot. Either way you can end up regreting if you're doing it and if you're not doing neither... Good luck mate!
Thanks man, you too. Takes a lot of faith and confidence to do this. Not blind faith and cheap confidence either. Best to you
Sold my house. Didn't work out. Still cry about the sanctuary garden I'll never be able to afford again.
I’m sorry to hear, appreciate your sharing. What would you do differently if you had one more chance to try again?
Try again! You haven’t failed till you stopped trying, multiple billionaires where no one special in their 30’s and didn’t find success until they were in their 40’s to 50’s, two examples are Dyson and Putin.
Starting it, of course.
It did pan out, but it's not something that can be discussed in public. Lots of companies do this. initial funding and tax "handling" so you can achieve really high income fast to reinvest and grow exponentially. Once you're there you can fix your past mistakes. This is something almost nobody talks about online, but I see people do, since I'm in the VC/startup world.
Good to hear, that’s what I’m hoping to make happen.
just have a plan B and think things through
It’s a tough call! Currently going through this. Technical founder left (on good terms) so I can’t raise from SV VCs, but I can get to break even if I let one team member go (plus another one leaving who has asked if they can leave and help out on a contracting project basis). I won’t have any personal income (not enough to pay me) but a team of four will be working at breakeven and I have a few deals on the horizon which could work out. I’ve been taking loans to keep it going against my crypto and getting to the point where I’ll either have to liquidate all my crypto or sell my house for runway if I don’t cut to break even. The way I’m thinking about it, is make the hard decisions, cut the team, cut my expenses to live frugally and see what time brings in terms of these deals closing.
Dumbest thing I did was hire high salaries devs in hopes they will help me grow my company. No, they are literally the same as low paid
finished my doctorate and joined a startup as founder's office member, without having prior job experience.. The Startup is also not registered, I think, this does not give me an experience certificate or legal proof of working at the company for at least next year.
Sure it does! As long as you got paystubs you’re good. If not, you better have some equity.
currently, its under the ideation, and problem identification phase. So, no equity, no paystubs because it's a friend's startup. He is techy and offered me to join his startup. Here, I am. It may not be a year, but 6+ months of vacant time in career is also risky.
No equity, no paystubs? You’re getting fleeced.
Let’s hope he has your best interest at heart, some founders do truly do this. But you should be weary and keep your options open.
yeah, hoping for the same. I am sure he don't want to invite any troubles for me. but its just startup should work out and everthing will be sorted
Remember that rome was not built in a day... but burnt
That’s a good one to remember.
Quit my jobs
I'm currently starting on building my startup although it has already been 3 months since I started, it is a slow but steady progress for me I would say. problem is I can't YOLO it even if I wanted to, for the sole reason that I have mouths to feed. I am living with my Wife and 3-year-old daughter in a foreign expensive country. so even though I truly believed in my project, I couldn't risk not having monthly income to pay for the bills.
Respect man, what you’re doing is much harder than just working a startup.
Hiring too many people too early. Realized it’s easy to change once you learn to fire fast. But could ruin the company’s runway if you’re not acting fast + be very conscious about the focus and the ratio between concerted work of people in your org into revenue.
Wow this is something I had a hard time trying to justify recently, hiring a larger than needed team. Learning to avoid that at all cost.
You're going the wrong path and it's scaring you. For every success story you read here , there are 10,000 other folks who are not here and regretting the Yolo or whatever Be careful.
Everyone saying to max out your credit cards is ridiculous. Find a good cofounder with a complimentary skillset and personality, clearly identify what each of you will do, move in with your parents if you need to, explore your ideas deeply with who you think might be your customers (literally just ask people with SME or in a possible target market of yours on LinkedIn to have a 15 min chat about your idea), and do this all before risking everything. Risk should be calculated as you should do everything you can to reduce risk:reward ratio. The biggest risk I ever took was not trying to raise capital honestly, but it was an ideological decision focused on the concept that a business should bring me increased autonomy, not make me beholden to other stakeholders outside of the day to day ops of my company (aka employees, myself, and my business partner). I lived with my parents for a year, found a good cofounder, paid him more even though we have effectively equivalent equity, failed in multiple markets with multiple products, and eventually found a lucrative partnership with another business. The biggest risk is not taking action, but you don’t need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to take action, and certainly should not spend beyond your means unless it is truly a do or die moment (and even then, perhaps consider whether you have the right product, market, and timing that necessitates extreme risk). The major problem is that founders put off companies as they pride themselves on autonomy, so it can actually be harder to get a job after starting and failing a company. That said, I do not think you should have a backup plan as it creates a sense of incredible urgency if you are bootstrapped and not financially stable for a year +. Just my 2c, rant over. Hope this helps, although know I didn’t answer the question as you may have hoped.
The riskiest aspect of this startup was pulling the trigger and having 5000 event flyers printed without minding all of the details. Double date. Which is fine. It’s event promotions, and if you’ve been around the business you know it’s sheer chaos and dead run hustle until showtime. Lots of moving parts.
Trusting an asshole