Ultra-Fast Startup Technology: Bootstrap with free or cheap web applications

(Reading time: 4 – 6 minutes)

So you wanna “do a startup?”

Ok, no problem.

I’ve done a couple myself, and it’s fun. Addictive, even.

Now is a great time, too. Turns out bootstrapping your software startup is dirt cheap compared to what it used to cost 10 years ago. The web has really changed everything: you can handle a vast amount of your business infrastructure on line now.

Any business is going to need some infrastructure, and software startups will need a variety of specialized tools for software development. There’s three main strategies for bootstrapping:

Totally free and open source software development to leverage totally free environments such as Sourceforge.
Self-hosting your entire project, either with an internal server or purchased server space elsewhere.
Mixture of self-hosted and inexpensively purchased services.

Each strategy has advantages and disadvantages. Much depends on your goal.

Sourceforge for Free and Open Source Software

If you want a totally free software solution, in the last few years Sourceforge has radically improved it’s offerings. However, freely available Sourceforge accounts require your source code to comply with an Open Source license. If you have need to keep your source code private, you will need to find a different solution.

Host everything yourself

Another option is self-hosting everything you need, ranging from Sugar CRM, Google Documents, through dotproject, wikimedia, a WordPress, Drupal or Joomla driven website, and much, much more.

The primary disadvantage of going completely self-hosting is that someone will have be take charge as a systems administrator. And that’s not a job too many developers or startup founders are going to willingly assume. It’s thankless and tedious. Nobody cares as along as everything “just works,” but people become irate when it doesn’t!

Split the difference: self-host and outsource

In my opinion, based on experience, the best option for a small startup is a mixture of freely available, self-hosted, and free or inexpensive web applications.

wush.net: $15/month, the best money you will ever spend. You get a subversion repository with integrated Trac, 2G of disk space, unlimited users and excellent customer service. It’s a very good deal. Wush.net doesn’t have an affiliate program, but I like their service so well I won’t promote anyone else.
37 Signals Basecamp: I’ve used Basecamp for a couple of years. Projects always seem to go smoother with Basecamp than without it. If you are purely developers, you may find Basecamp redundant with Trac capabilities, but the moment you add someone not comfortable with hard coding Trac wiki syntax, your team will be more productive moving all non-coding task management to Basecamp projects. (I know this from experience.) Best of all, you can start with a free account, and if you like it, an account upgrade to a small startup level (15 people) are very reasonably priced at $24 per month.
WordPress: Host this yourself, use it to build out your company web site. Even if all you want is a static web site, WordPress gets you a lot of bang for your buck. Easy installation, easy maintenance, easy to add material, all your SEO is magically handled because WordPress is so well structured. Check out Website In A Weekend for more information.
Google Documents: free, easy, with just enough power to get a startup well underway. Google Docs is my “goto” solution when I need to collaborate on documentation. It’s much easier to collaborate using Google Docs than with MS Word; merges are easier being handled real time, and you don’t have to worry about passing documents around, and who has the latest or most correct version.

Scaling up

All of the tools I recommend scale well. What’s of more importance is that you plan to for scaling with your business practices. No matter what, if you want to scale, process matters.

And the bigger you get, the more it matters.

Creating task lists to accomplish project requirements should be a given. But there’s more that you can do to get a grip on your processes. For example:

Make a practice to keep a log of what got done and when. Checking off tasks is only half of the battle. There’s always crises that pop up unexpectedly. Keep a daily a log that keeps track of these as well.
Consider tracking your time very tightly. Use a web application such as Clicktime which will let you connect your task list to the appropriate Quickbooks accounts. Once a month, go back over your time sheets and do a little post-mortem analysis. Did your forecasts pan out? Or did you seriously under- or over-estimate how long tasks would require for completion? Use this information to calibrate forward for the following month’s tasking.

These techniques are probably overkill for very small startups… but get in the habit now, you won’t have to worry about it when you’re under the gun later.