What is Bootstrapping?
Bootstrapping: Growing a business from its own earnings, without outside investors.
Where Bootstrapping fits
Bootstrapping is part of Lean Startup in Entrepreneurship. Lean startup means building the smallest test (an MVP), learning from real customers, then pivoting or persevering in short cycles.
Practical tip
Validate with customers first and measure what they actually do.
Related terms
- Minimum viable product
- The simplest version of a product that lets you test an idea.
- Crowdfunding
- Raising small amounts from many people, usually online.
- Scalability
- Ability to grow sales a lot without costs growing as fast.
- Customer discovery
- Talking to likely customers to test assumptions.
- Iteration
- Repeating a cycle of build, test and improve.
- Validated learning
- Proof gained from real customer behavior.
- Lean startup
- Building and testing in small, quick steps.
Formulas you will use with it
Test yourself
Which term means: “Growing a business from its own earnings, without outside investors.”?
Bootstrapping · Iteration · Crowdfunding
Answer: Bootstrapping
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