Reality of Bootstrapping

sasha uritsky

Aug 17, 2015

Going after investors? Do you know that less than 1 percent of startups actually raise VC (or angel) capital, which means that the vast majority are self-funded. Yet the main reason for it simply lies in the inability of most companies to find investors.

Bootstrapping, however, has several strategic advantages for your company's future growth. Perhaps the biggest is retaining the majority of shares and control over the strategy and direction your company is moving towards.

It also teaches financial discipline. Bootstrapping at the start helps to understand the importance of revenue and cash flow, as opposed to unabridged product development, and keeps you connected to your company's financial reality. Only when profitability increase do you then green-light new opportunities, increased risk-taking, and growth acceleration.

In reality, the founders are expected to be flexible. While entrepreneurs have certain intentions and philosophies when they are starting out, a hallmark trait for successful founders is the ability to adapt to changing environments and opportunities.

Sometimes, that means waiting a long time to generate the financial metrics that really matter, revenue and profit. By challenging your leadership team to focus on building the business organically and figuring out how to make the company consistently profitable on a model that can scale without VC capital, you make your company more valuable to future investors.

Interested in reading more? Check out our other blogs:

MAKING AI MAINSTREAM

We are experiencing a strong demand for conversational AI solutions. It is coming from every corner of the B2C market. It is growing by the day.

Conversational AI is becoming increasingly popular among the consumer facing business community. It is easy to see why - AI offers sales and customer service scalability and therefore is critical for the long-term success of a business.

Conversational AI solutions such as chatbots, voice bots, and virtual assistants provide much needed speed and efficiency, in an age where the rapid advancement of technology makes them virtually the only sustainable customer service solution.

Bu there is a catch - AI is complicated. Mainstream businesses do not have in house AI expertise. And it is not part of their business model to develop such expertise.

Today’s market offer several good conversational AI solutions, such as IBM Watson or Google DialogFlow. However, getting a business value out of them requires the very AI expertise that mainstream companies do not possess.

So what can be done?

Any AI solution should follow these three steps in order for the mainstream business community to fully benefit from it:

Conversational AI should come as a service,
The service should be available in natural language,
The service should be fully personalized.

In the next several posts we will explore how the AI industry, including nmodes, is moving towards achieving these goals.

Send Us Your Travel/Hospitality Business Pitch

nmodes is a data analytics company. We analyse data based on consumer intent. We’re pretty good at it.

We spend a significant portion of our processing resources on analysing travel data. And so we are fast to know when somebody is planning a trip, or looking for a place to stay, or visiting your city and searching for activities, restaurants, entertainment.

In addition to data processing we help businesses in monetizing the data we deliver them. We create and implement the marketing strategy to convert intent-driven consumer data into your sales. Typically the majority of the data comes from social web, and consequently a successful marketing strategy has an important benefit of establishing long-term social presence for your business.

We also offer free end user services. Knowing consumer intent gives us capability to identify in real-time social users in need of travel help. Our data is actionable, allowing to respond momentarily to individuals with timely recommendations and advice.

Knowing consumer intent in real-time gives business power to control the sales process. Your customer satisfaction will improve, and your sales will grow significantly.

And if you are not ready to start using our full service, you can always send us a short description of your business, its value, and how it is better from competition. We will be happy to connect consumers with your product when appropriate. No commitment on your part is required.

Intent-driven data offers instant value, start enjoying it.