Funding is a hurdle perpetually resident on the road to starting a new business. While many successful entrepreneurs in the UK resorted to venture capitals from start-up investors and some others to helps and loans from friends and family, there is a small group that utilised only the little funds they had and still managed to achieve success where more privileged entrepreneurs were failing.
Within that small group are the self-made giants of our time, the elites who refused to be in debt. And if you are looking to bootstrap your start-up to success like these great men and women did, you will need to adopt the same financial principles they applied to manage their finance better
- Create a business model that can produce money quickly.
- Track and curtail your spending.
- Separate your personal finance from your business finance by opening a separate current account.
- Avoid outsourcing work you can carry out yourself.
- Learn and build more skills.It will help you reduce the amount of work you outsource.
For a bit of inspiration, let’s take a look at some entrepreneurs that bootstrapped their business ideas to success.
- K. Rowling
At the time J.K. Rowling was writing her first Harry Potter book in the ’90s, she was an unemployed single mother, who sometimes starved so that her daughter could eat. She practically started without a dime. Even after she finished writing the book, it took her a whole year to find a publisher interested in offering her a book deal. Having written and published seven Harry Potter novels and other books, she has transformed herself from a poor unpublished author to a millionaire ($848 million) whose net worth is estimated to reach $1 billion in 2017. She currently owns the trademark ‘Pottermore Limited’.
- Si Richard Branson
Branson began his entrepreneurial journey at the age of sixteen with just £300 and by creating a student magazine. Then he established a mail-order record company in 1970 and opened his first shop on Oxford Street in London within a year. He is worth $4.9billion (October 2016) and his company, Virgin, is a brand covering many niches, including telecommunications and space tourism.
- Jon Hunt
Best known as the founder of Foxtons (a UK estate agency) and Pavilion (a London restaurant and business members club), Jon Hunt ventured into entrepreneurship at the age of nineteen when he borrowed £100 deposit to purchase a one-bedroom flat for £4,500. He founded Foxtons at the age of 28 with his school friend Anthony Pelligrinelli. He is currently worth £1.25 billion.
- Lord Sugar
Born in East London and presently worth £1.4 billion, Lord Sugar started by working at a local greengrocer when he was growing up. Then at the age of sixteen he began his own business on a van (he bought it for £50), selling car aerials and electrical products. He founded Amstrad, a brand specialising in cheap consumer electronic products, in 1968. If you have seen BBC’s The Apprentice, then you know Lord Sugar.
While nothing can be more inspiring to an aspiring entrepreneur than reading about the lives of these great men and women that persevered against all odds to become successful with limited capital, inspiration will amount to nothing if you don’t push forward and hard like they did, and if you don’t adhere to the discipline they applied towards achieving success.