Venture capitalist Jason Caplain asked me to send him a few dollar-saving tips for early-stage entrepreneurs for his great blog "Southeast VC."
Here are the five tips I sent him--all done by us in building Broadwick :-).
Live in your office. Forget the expensive apartment rent or home mortgage. All you really need is a futon, a computer, a George Foreman Grill, and internet access. You can always store your clothes and shower at a friends house nearby.
Barter. Provide your services free of charge in exchange for services of commensurate value from a vendor or service provider you need assistance from (even better if you provide something with a low marginal cost, like software).
Leverage Community Resources. Many colleges offer free legal advice through their law school to aspiring entrepreneurs and start-ups. Within your community, you can get often get pro bono assistance from the Service Corps of Retired Executives (www.score.org) or the Small Business Development Center (http://www.sba.gov/sbdc/sbdcnear.html). Many business schools also offer programs through which they will assign a team of MBA students to review your business plan or provide free consulting assistance.
Offer equity. Some entrepreneurial-minded law and accounting firms will accept stock options in your company in exchange for payment or will allow you to hold off on paying for their service until you raise your first round of funding. If you need their services but don't yet have the funding, it certainly doesn't hurt to ask if they would be willing to work for you under this type of arrangement.
Get in the organic listings. Get a website up, build lots of related content on your website, then ask related web site owners to link to your website in an article on in a resources section. By building good content and quality related incoming links, you can, over 9-12 months, get good rankings in the major search engines for your targeted keywords--which will provide a stream of free leads for your business for many years to come.
Posted by ryanallis at January 29, 2007 03:46 PM
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About this Blog: Follow the journey of entrepreneur Ryan Allis as he builds his company iContact into the worldwide leader in on-demand software for online communications, publishes his book Zero to One Million, travels the country as a speaker on entrepreneurship, explores the worlds of public policy, technology, marketing, management, leadership, venture capital, and organizational behavior, and lives a passionate life as a North Carolina entrepreneur and CEO.
