Business Opportunities Weblog

March 31, 2005 by Dane Carlson | 2 Comments

Greg Gianforte:

How do you launch a successful high-tech business? If you ask the typical MBA, they’ll give the same answer. Write a comprehensive in-depth business plan, take it to investors to secure a healthy initial round of funding, recruit the heaviest heavyweights you can, and start the PR machine cranking.

But, of course, they’d be completely wrong.

If you look at all start-ups, less than one percent get VC funding. Most are launched with less than $20,000. And some – including Dell – were created with less that $1,000. I personally started my first software company – which was acquired for $10 million by McAfee in 1994 – with a couple of friends and about $5,000 in cash. And I started RightNow Technologies – which went public August 4, 2004 and as of this writing has a market cap of $350 million – at my desk in Bozeman, Montana without any external funding whatsoever until the company was well-established with 400 customers.

That’s why the advice I’d give to anyone wanting to start a company today would be just the opposite of what they tell you in B-school. I’d tell you to “Bootstrap” it.

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