The tale of trap avoidance while bootstrapping
"You shouldn't worry I said, that ain't no crime, cause if you get it wrong you'll get it right next time"
Get It Right Next Time - Gerry Rafferty
This song has been on a regular playlist recently as I have driven forward with my new venture (Foundry Fuel) and fight the doubts and challenges in my own head. It's pretty obvious why. Its hard enough to be a founder and learn lots of new skills when trying to build a business. When you come off the back of any failure it's even harder to have confidence in what you are doing even though you know it's the right thing and you need to do it. Every entrepreneur has doubts of course, it's the only role I have ever had where you get in your own way more than any other and it's one of the key things that makes being a founder so different to any other role.
How do I make progress and get it right this time?
What is new though, and very different to where I have been before, is that I am doing this myself with no co-founders. That adds so many new dimensions to the role, both good and bad. For example a good part of this is that I no longer have to hugely depend on someone else to drive the financials and get things moving in that direction. The gap and lack of visibility is gone. That's good in many ways but bad when you consider that getting things moving in that direction is a new skill set I need to develop and another thing to add to my list of new responsibilities. I am alone so I don't need to think of paying everyone but I do take on more financial risk personally and a higher workload. I am a tech founder so I can build things myself but i need to do this alone and can't expect people to pick up the slack if i get tired. There are loads of other examples like this which just mean that there are swings and roundabouts everywhere.
Money and finance is a big challenge as a solo founder. At Selazar we had a team of co-founders who, for the most part (another story for another time), collaborated really well and were strong in different fields. We raised money several times and Jack really did a great job keeping us going that way. However, that wasn't our money and we were never personally wealthy so when it died we really did come out of Selazar with nothing. We were not earning huge wages, we never got any dividends and the business wasn't sold. Financially we went in with little and came out with less than that. After six years of work that's grim and when you are miserable and feel like a washout and a failure it's cold comfort, but we saw and did things most founders only dream of so that means when you go again you have an arsenal of experience and knowledge to draw down on. So don't despair good reader what we did come out with was ambition, experience and tenacity. You just need to get back to that founder space in your head.
So how do I get through this, how do I make progress and get it right this time?
Well, no massive pile of founding money but lots of knowledge means one thing. Bootstrapping. Bootstrapping is where you are starting a business without external help or working capital. Would I love to have Angel investment and co-founders at this stage. Sure, it would be great but I need to do several things for me and engaging with Angels and others so early on was not something i found palatable. The beauty of bootstrapping for me as a technical founder is lower stakes, the increased capacity to take risk and quickly pivot when things go awry. I wanted to get my hands dirty. I wanted, no needed, to build something with my own hands and fall in love with technology, coding and platforms all over again, and I needed to give myself space and compassion to do just that. Brothers and sisters, I am pleased to tell you I have. With gusto!
But a man/woman (and his family) do not live on water alone so I need to pay the mortgage and earn a living while I do this. This is where the real challenge of Bootstrapping comes into view. How do you work a full time job and build a business behind the scenes. It's easy to say "Evenings and weekends" but every technical person knows the road to Hell is paved with half baked code projects on GitHub. So how do you keep the momentum up and make progress without getting distracted by life and fall into the hole of The PVP? The dreaded Personal Vanity Project.
Well now that I am getting close to running a live trial of Foundry Fuel, here's how i have done it so far. It's something I call The Rule of Five.
I didn't have time to plan a massive list of Epics and User Stories (I did try) in Jira before I got started. I also didn't want to maintain this list as I went along. After all it was just me building this thing so there was only myself to manage. I also needed to provide space to pivot and change quickly as I learned new things and changed my mind as development proceeded. The Rule of Five is perfect for this.
The Rule of Five
So how does this work? Well, before I start each session I have a list of the top five things I need to do next to get things moving. It's a list that is concise, measurable and trackable and keeps me focussed on the now. These five tasks can be infrastructure based, business planning based or code based, spreading my skill set and adapting as I go along.
A real example is the following.
1 - Clean up React routing
2 - Double check registration for techs
3 - Resize dashboard template
4 - Check user id pickup
5 - Register domain to API Gateway
So i would sit down at each session and try to do as many as I could of that list. At the end I would review it and replace the completed tasks with new tasks for the next session. No more than five tasks can be listed because even if i do achieve them I probably need to (and deserve) a break from work so five is just right.
Did it work? Well most of the time I achieved these five goals, I could look back at the end of each session with a sense of achievement and plan ahead with drive for the next session. When I didn't get all five that was fine. I still tried and I often did several things of value from the list and I still felt that sense of achievement. This is critical in my mind. When you are, as a founder, lying in bed at night with the terror and fear that you are on a fool's errand, it won't work and you are not up to scratch, this helps keep you focussed. For me, personally, this is worth it's proverbial weight in gold.
Over time I could see and feel real progress and this is a big deal as it helps you keep coming back. Small changes really do make a big difference and getting started is easier if you can see some clear targets.
So that's how I have stayed on track and as I get closer to trials I am excited to share the first part of Foundry Fuel with you all and help change things for the better. Will I get it right this time? Well time will tell but giving it a shot, setting goals and seeing them delivered has got to be good right?
We've got this!
Gareth
