As Nikole Gipps rightly mentioned in her latest post at NHG - Starting A Business Out Of College

Money is what drives businesses. While there are a lot of factors going into entrepreneurship, money has to be the #1 reason why a new business succeeds or fails

The lack of money, start up capital, funding or financing happens truly happens to be the prime reason why budding entrepreneurs don’t leave their corporate jobs or decide to the plunge into the unknown.

There are ways to obviate the need for capital if an aspiring entrepreneur gives a thought to ‘Bootstrapping’ - Defined by the dictionary as to “Help oneself, often through improvised means”. It would mean that you start with nothing in your hands. Nothing but the sheer determination, guts, a cockiness that comes with the entrepreneur-mentality types and a passionate idea

Think about it this way - if you had always thought that selling products in the retail format was a great idea, but you could never even start because offline retail space would be expensive, you should have thought about an e-commerce only model. Yes, just put up your products online in an e- store and sell them away. You would spend on promotions of course (which won’t be as much!) but after the initial but inevitable slogging, there are chances that your business can be automated and you can be off looking for greener pastures.

Had you thought of getting into the services business? You would obviously need manpower, but then, if you had thought of going I-will-recruit-freelancers only business model, it would work out to be true bootstrapping, because you would be running your business avoiding the fancy offices, staff and air-conditioners. Your staff will work in their pyjamas and you would do the same in yours. No overheads. However, part-timers and freelancers might not be very serious about their work and you might tend to have a tumultous time dealing with their vanishing-acts. But then, every business has its share of problems. Isn’t attrition a problem?A prominent one. Accept it and be prepared - the best one can do.

So if you just sit down and think about it all, you will realize that you don’t need anything to start except the desire to start up. Here is an account of Bijoy Goswami of bootstrapbootcamp.com fame talk about his point of view on bootstrapping, what it means and how entrepreneurs need to go about it.

I am sure you have enough juice now, on the beauty and elegance of Bootstrapping as a surefire way to start, grow and nurture your own business.

If you would like to further read about Bootstrapping and profiles of some daredevil entrepreneurs, you could take a look at the following links :

It isn’t about money, honey. It’s about YOU.

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