What it's like to bootstrap a business before it can financially support you
If I could do it all over again and actually succeed this time:<p>* Get your living expenses down to $1000&#x2F;mo before you start your startup (this is just a target for the northwestern US, find your own where you live).<p>* Multiply all projections by 3. People will complain that you are being over-conservative and probably laugh at you or grow concerned. They might point to other companies that succeeded in such and such time. Ignore them just like they ignore survival bias.<p>* Divide revenue by 5 to 10. A repair business running at 30% profitability needs to gross $3 for every dollar it keeps. A restaurant needs to make 20x at 5% margin. Chargebacks. Refunds. Illness. Accidents. Countless life experiences can make it feel like you are treading water for months&#x2F;years. Another way to say this is that each dollar you make in your startup is like making $5-10 anywhere else, so treat it with the reverence it deserves.<p>* Donate plasma. This is a form of prostitution because you are selling yourself for money, but you&#x27;ll make an extra $300&#x2F;mo. You&#x27;ll get a glimpse of the value of human life and dignity inherent to an industrial society that&#x27;s being denied to us all by the lack of UBI. It will also show you the true value of money because you&#x27;ll see that retail service jobs pay 1&#x2F;2 to 1&#x2F;4 per hour what plasma pays. You&#x27;ll learn how all money is blood money because someone always exchanges blood, sweat, tears or time for it (unless they are born into it like the people who most likely have it today). And if you aren&#x27;t ready to put your life on the line in some fashion, you might not be ready to make the big sacrifices that running a startup demands, or even lead others.<p>* Learn The Secret (The Law of Attraction) and other mindfulness practices. It&#x27;s not so much that they are real (my experience is that it&#x27;s all real) but that successful people are likely to attribute their success to things besides luck. It&#x27;s good to know how to speak the lingo and present a good appearance for networking, since your primary revenue stream will probably come from a human need you might not have expected.<p>* Find a romantic partner that believes in you. Short of that, work a good job for a while and provide for their needs for some number of months or years before your startup so they&#x27;re willing to take a risk on you. Or reject this advice completely and be a loner for a few years. Most startups were started by geeks, so it might be advantageous. But if you succeed, don&#x27;t be a douche. Nobody likes that you succeed. Many secretly hate you for it. Be magnanimous. Pay it forward. If you suffer in solitude or walk around like a self-help guru, you&#x27;ll probably fail.<p>* Remember that the thing isn&#x27;t the thing. Financing to get you to the thing is. Our entire system of western capitalism is at odds with your personal dream of being the next Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. And since all money is blood money, maybe you don&#x27;t want that anyway. We need new heroes like, I dunno, Captain America. I think that there is vast untapped potential in ideas like cooperatives and communal stewardship of the things we care about. I&#x27;ve tried to adopt ideas like radical inclusion into my life. Maybe something in your belief system will lead you to a worthy cause and the funding to see it through. We all know that banks sure won&#x27;t.<p>Well this post stinks but my gut seems satisfied that most of the nonintuitive stuff has been covered. Happy holidays everyone.