Blogosphere on Bootstrapping: Anne Clelland
Anne Clelland sent me a set of posts straight from her heart. She describes the agony of her journey with all its emotional ups and downs. In What a Company Founder Can Lose she lists a series of things she really misses:
I had no idea how much safety, security, freedom, and intellectual power a salary gave me. Hunters and gatherers created writing only after learning to farm gave them time to contemplate the possibility that a symbol could stand for a thing, even an idea. Scrabbling to collect revenue, I have so little of that essential seed for creativity: time for quiescence.
In What a Company Founder Can Gain, she explains some reasons that make it worthwhile:
When I was an employee of a corporation or an institution, I often felt in the presence of a great expanse of possibility, trapped at the edge, slogging through the muck of meetings, forms, and politics.
As a company founder, without the permission and, albeit, guidance of a committee, I have built a boat and I have nimbly jumped aboard. No bureaucracy, no paperwork, no personality workarounds. We’ve set sail.
She lists what she has sacrificed in A Sabbatical from Force.
Today, I grant myself an entrepreneur’s one-year leave of absence from what I seek and what I love outside of my start-up. The angst of having too little time and too few resources takes my mind and heart away from passion for my idea and my execution of it as a business. That feels like force against flow. I’ve had them. I will have them again. For one year, I relinquish:
Great writing, Anne. If you need support, come to my roundtables.
Marc Dangeard →
This segment is part 9 in a 13 part series
Jump to part: Luke Timmerman, Brad Feld, Taylor Davidson, Jeff Cornwall, SVB, Dane Carlson, Tim Berry, Allan Young, Anne Clelland, Marc Dangeard, Jonathan Gosier, Marc MacLeod, Cathy Bogaart
Anne has the courage (and the skill) to express the feelings of many/most entrepreneurs that I have met. And the boot-strappers are absolutely the most adventurous. It’s really not that scary when you have $5 million in venture capital. With just a good plan and a credit card, it’s a far more challenging road.
It takes real MOXIE.
Thank you so much for the praise and support and for finding value in my posts on bootstrapping. “Delayed gratification” takes on quite a meaning when the first start-up year turns to the second and the third is a few months away…
The challenges of bootstrapping are mitigated for me by my company’s membership in a business incubator/business accelerator. The classic errors that company start-ups make, only because they don’t know enough not to make them – incorporating, getting trademarks, keeping the books, for example – I haven’t made because I’ve been advised by experts during the process. My work is with making my idea work, not with putting out fires from a poor company founding. In spite of the travails of bootstrapping, my chances of creating a viable business are hugely increased because I have asked for – sometimes gratefully, sometimes begrudgingly – and received, help.