CNBC asks XANT CEO Dave Elkington how to bootstrap a great startup
XANT CEO Dave Elkington (Photo from CNBC)
Startup finance represents a true chicken and egg problem: how to build company infrastructure without revenue, and how to acquire revenue without the infrastructure necessary to generate it? Of course myriad options exist for disrupting that conundrum via the infusion of outside money, but the strings attached to such cash at an early stage are often too onerous for the nascent entrepreneur to stomach.
The ideal solution, of course, is to bootstrap — meaning, build the company from cash derived from sales and any other creative source, bit by bit. But here again, the chicken/egg problem prevails.
Consequently, entrepreneurs’ stories of how they managed to successfully disrupt this cycle without diluting their ownership or otherwise giving up control consistently prove very interesting.
CNBC published a story prominently featuring our own CEO Dave Elkington, regarding how he managed to build a highly admired company following years spent bootstrapping before accepting venture capital.
Among Elkington’s insights:
“You can only grow as fast as you can sell, but instead of going to investors for funding, you have to go to your customers for funding.”
Read the full article here to learn more about how he and PluralSight founder Aaron Skonnard discuss how to make that work.