I’m a fan of Guy Kawasaki and I’ve been rereading his blog for the last couple days. As I go through the old posts I keep noticing how much he has influenced my understanding of marketing and more importantly success. Guy is a master of the Art of the Start. He is the start-up sage.
My start up philosophy is a little different the what Guy might suggest, but it comes from the same fast and cheap school of thought. I’ll focus on getting started without taking on debt. I’ll worry about scaling when cash-flow supports it. There is a time and place for leveraged financing, but this isn’t it. I’m using free community supported tools and borrowing the delivery van. I’m using a local grocery store as my warehouse and supply chain. When cash flow allows, I may need to upgrade the website and start my own delivery fleet. Until then, I’ll have incurred no debt.
Its a short list, but here are the assets I will be using.
The software
- Zencart - The website catalog, shopping cart, and payment processing
- wordpress - The blog and possible a marketing tool
- docs.google.com - Spreadsheets
Other Assests
- My personal Macbook Pro
- Borrowed Van
- Domain name
- Logo and Website Design
Total spent for the software is $0.
Outlay for everything else
$30.00 for lunch and a old mac mini for Logo and Web art
$10.00 for the Domain
Gas for the van.
Not a bad start.
Freshpost.net has been my domain for several years, but it hasn’t always been this pretty. In my college days, freshpost.net was a groupware server (phpgroupware) used to keep my teamwork projects on schedule. Later, during freshpost.net’s most popular period, it served as my fresh produce industry blog (wordpress) keeping my suppliers in the loop. Often the freshpost.net server has been the target of my server technology experiments and abuse. For curiosities sake, I’ve installed scripts for wikis, blogs, and content management systems and even hacked up a few scripts of my own.
Now the domain will follow me into my next adventure. Intention sharing is an important tool in accomplishing goals. By telling people what you plan to do, you make it difficult to back out when things get difficult. So for better of worse I’ll be blogging the start up of my new grocery company MetroGro.com right here.
In exchange for keeping me motivated by reading this blog, I’ll be sharing every detail of starting my business in the following posts. Hopefully there are a few bootstrappers out there who will find this interesting or at least informative. From business strategy and tools, to each and every foul up I make along the way, it will all be here.
