Back in San Francisco I’ve been talking with a friend here working in a startup that doesn’t want funding. Self funding means that the whole company is crammed into one guys apartment and they’re all biding time living on savings until the product revenues start coming in. Its a close group of friends who’ve worked together at various companies for years. Working together now on their startup without investors or board members pressuring people to do more faster, means they can pursue a more natural pace.
There are aspects of the business they know they’ll need to get to, but they can spend time with their initial customers and make sure the product is solid before developing additional features or launching into rapid expansion. Not having money forces a real clarity only making purchases which are absolutely necessary. The whole exercise has a certain intellectual honesty as there’s no one to convince of anything, there are no sides, the team is together.
My friend says its a nice environment. Sorta family style. Everyone likes hanging out together, and they write software while they do.
There’s an aspect of this I feel it will be important to carry into the iAccelerator. I have posted a couple times about fund raising. As importantly I will be encouraging teams to be frugal. By being frugal and looking for money early from customers or investors we can avoid running out of money becoming a life threatening situation adding stress to the work situation.
I believe intelligent individuals focused on real customer needs with time and awareness will develop products which solve real problems people are willing to pay for. It just takes time, so making sure the experience is enjoyable, is critical.