Five Strategies For Starting A Business With Limited Resources

Many people have ideas for businesses, but they have no idea where to begin or think they need a lot of resources up front to start out. While having additional resources is beneficial, it is not a must to have a pot of gold when embarking on a new venture. 

Being an entrepreneur myself, I’ve learned five different ways you can start a business from the ground up you might not have considered:

1. Bootstrap a minimum viable product. Bootstrapping is all about starting with what you have, rather than waiting for a perfect moment and the perfect resources to start a perfect project. To bootstrap, you need to come up with a minimum viable version of your product and evaluate how much it would cost to build it.

In the book The Lean Startup, Author Eric Ries described how you can create an MVP for your tech project. Put simply, you can create an MVP by defining what your business or product does in one simple sentence. Then, build what you described, and eliminate everything else.

For example, Uber’s MVP thesis likely would have been: “Order a car with a driver through a smartphone app.” In the beginning stages of the company, that’s exactly what you could do: simply request a ride. It wasn’t until later iterations that Uber’s services grew. From my perspective, the MVP is what allowed the company’s founders to find out whether their idea was worth pursuing without breaking the bank.

An MVP allows you to develop and launch your business for less money. The big investments should come only after you are able to validate your concept. This is how my team and I start all of our new projects at my company as well. 

2. Use a customer-funded capital model. This might be hard to believe, but sometimes, people will be willing to pre-pay you for a service or product before it launches if you can show validation that you will deliver on your promise.

This is exactly what I did when I was starting my wholesale sports nutrition business back in 2017. I didn’t have the capital needed to invest in inventory, so I approached one of the wholesale distributors with whom I had a good relationship. I offered to get him the same items he was buying at 30% off if he prepaid me the entire amount. He agreed to do that if I provided him with an official receipt of payment as a guarantee of delivery. The deals were successful, and I was able to fund my new business with money I received from my customers without having anything myself.  

3. Consider crowdfunding. The beauty of the internet is that it lets you reach millions of people in an instant and broadcast your idea at almost no cost. This is why I believe crowdfunding platforms are worth considering if you’re starting a business from scratch. These platforms allow you to raise a certain amount of money for an upcoming product.

From working with a client who has raised more than $1 million on one of these platforms, I learned that it’s important to show what your product will do when it’s ready, as well as offer perks to those who contribute, such as early access, discounts or sometimes even equity in the business. This has the potential to help you raise funds from hundreds or thousands of people from all over the world who believe in your idea.

Read more: www.forbes.com