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Bootstrapping a
Non-Tech Startup
The brutal journey of idea to reality
By Isaac Morehouse
For my wife Heather, my brother Levi, the Praxis team,
and all the Praxians out there.
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Contents
Who’s writing this book? ------------------------------ 4
The Setup -------------------------------------------------- 6
The Lessons ----------------------------------------------- 8
Build yourself -------------------------------------------------- 9
It’s gotta pass the willing to fail test --------------------- 12
Go all the way or don’t even try -------------------------- 14
Do one thing every day ------------------------------------- 18
Social is the most valuable kind of capital ------------- 21
Obstacles are for others ------------------------------------ 24
Don’t look for money until you have to ----------------- 29
Focus on a single customer -------------------------------- 33
Sell stone soup ----------------------------------------------- 37
Taking a beating beats throwing the big punch ------- 40
Stop looking for a silver bullet ---------------------------- 44
Ending ---------------------------------------------------- 47
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Who’s writing this book?
But this book isn’t about a specific company. It’s about the
earliest stages of starting one. It’s about my personal
experience of going from complete startup novice to
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founder and CEO, and what I learned in the process about
the process.
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The Setup
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growing company, but we’re still striving every day to
become a cliché and Change The World.
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The Lessons
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Lesson 1
But like all fluffy clichés, it’s true. That’s the first lesson for
getting a company from idea to reality.
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transform from an irresponsibly curious guy to a
disciplined, creative machine. Then he turned it on me.
He challenged me to blog every day for 6 months. I
committed, and that was the first step in the launch of
Praxis.
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busy building yourself so that if and when a great idea
comes, you’ll be ready and able to act.
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Lesson 2
But some things are worth failing for. When you find one,
you need to act and fast.
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them, but only if I knew there was very little chance of
failure.
That’s a sign that I’m not the right person to launch that
company. If you’re in it because you think it’s a sure thing,
you will quit when it gets really, really hard. And it will.
This was the first business idea I was willing to fail for.
When I thought about trying Praxis and failing, it felt ten
times better than the thought of not trying it at all. That
was the test. That was how I knew this was the one.
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Lesson 3
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I knew that a startup was unlikely to succeed under these
conditions, and my family certainly wouldn’t. That wasn’t
an option. I needed her in on this 100% if I was going to be
able to go in 100%.
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I waited.
OK, now it’s just getting ridiculous. Did she forget? Is she
trying to torture me? Is she waiting for me to sweeten the
deal somehow? Maybe I should remind her? No. I told her
to take as long as she needed and I told her I’d say nothing
more.
So I waited.
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If I had partially pursued it while hoping to win her over
just enough to let me pursue it a little more, I would have
gotten crushed by the first big setback. I could always use
the excuse, “Well, I guess I have to stop for my wife’s sake.”
Destroying any excuse to retreat or any way to pin it on
someone else put me in a position of win or die. Best thing
I could have done.
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Lesson 4
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business bank account? Who could help me navigate all
this?
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What really mattered was not letting a single day go by
where this thing didn’t make progress. Time is the enemy
with a startup. A day without action means you’re going
backwards, losing value.
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Lesson 5
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quickly, and I’m forgetful. That made the practice of
writing thank you notes the furthest thing from natural. A
leader I respected wrote me a thank you note for
something small. I asked him why, and he passed on advice
someone had given to him, “Look for excuses to write
thank you notes.” It stuck with me. I bought a stack and
carried them with me everywhere, stamps and envelopes
too. I used them generously.
It’s not so much about thank you notes specifically, but the
mindset necessary to write lots of them. It
requires/develops an abundance mindset. You begin to see
win-wins everywhere. You become more grateful and
happy. You begin to see subtle ways people just doing their
job is helpful to you. This in turn makes you more able and
willing to help more people out.
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social capital I had and got some lines of credit. I asked for
introductions, advice, lists of leads, design help, tech help,
legal help, strategic help, research help, product
development help, and most of all help spreading the word.
I traded some phantom stock and paid some cash, but I
mostly traded on goodwill and positive social capital I’d
built from helping lots of people, being kind and open
appreciative, and having a reputation as a guy who helps
lots of people.
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Lesson 6
“The brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t
want it badly enough.”
—Randy Pausch
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My goal from day one was a program that took one year or
less and cost $0 to participants who got accepted. They
would get awesome coaching, community, curriculum
resources and experience as a startup apprentice, and get
hired right out of the program. No debt, no lost time, no
boring BS make-work or memorization.
It was a win-win-win.
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for free if they created no value for the company. In fact,
the DOL policy read,
Like all comfy sounding labor laws, this was created at the
behest of older, better off workers as a deliberate attempt
to shut out younger, lower skilled workers. Vested interests
don’t like free market competition.
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C’mon Isaac, you really think you’re that special? That no
one else had an idea like this?
My brother laughed.
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dead. Mindset is everything. If you’re willing to take no for
an answer, you’ll get it. If you’re not, you’ll navigate a sea of
no’s until you find a yes.
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Lesson 7
Lies.
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I’m not for or against raising money. What I’m against is
closing off your greatest asset — your work ethic and
imagination — because you’ve bought the, “I can only do X
with money” narrative. I’m wary of this narrative because I
had to fight it. It’s a tough opponent.
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If I had a million dollars to start Praxis, I shudder now to
think of all the ways I would have misused it. I needed
small victories under my belt before I took any big swings.
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option and would never be an option, what would I do?”
There was always something.
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Lesson 8
But even this was broad enough for me to lose focus. The
real break-through for choosing actions to get traction
came when I got down to the smallest unit possible.
33
When I was bootstrapping Praxis and trying to exploit
every low-cost marketing and PR opportunity possible, I
realized the message was only potent when highly targeted.
“Hey, ambitious young people, check this out!” is pretty
weak compared to, “Hey Jane Doe, let me show you how
this can help you achieve your specific goals.”
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individualist from the Midwest who mixes practical, not-
to-good for anything work ethic with wild Silicon Valley
dreaming and lots of swagger. When I wrote and spoke
about Praxis, I spoke to that person directly. It was a
certain type of individual within a small niche of young
people I already knew well.
I never would have sold Mitch had I tried to sell his entire
demographic. I never would have sold him had I tried to do
it in a scalable way. My choice to channel all my efforts to
one specific, imagined customer led me to one specific, real
customer for whom I targeted everything.
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optimizing your approach to fit some conglomerate of
opinion from people with no skin in the game. Instead,
define down to the last detail your ideal first customer.
Target one single person, real or imagined, until you make
a sale. Get someone to pay you. Only then is your idea real,
and market-proven.
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Lesson 9
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feast with soup, bread, beer, and dancing. Everyone loves
it. All from three stones!
The take-away from the story helped me get Praxis off the
ground.
The soldiers knew if they had the resources, they could feed
themselves and deliver an end product the entire village
would love. Just asking for ingredients wouldn’t do. They
had to sell the end product before they were capable of
delivering it. They needed to paint a picture of the possible
as if it already existed. They took a gamble on themselves.
They knew if they could sell the vision, they’d be able to
deliver in the end. Had they produced a bad soup, or kept it
all for themselves, they’d be run out of town on a rail.
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if I had good people, I could place them at these and other
businesses, even though no company had given me a firm
commitment to host.
Selling stone soup is scary. If you can get all the resources
and build the full product before selling, do. But often you
can’t, and you have to decide if you’re going to let it stop
you, or if you’re going to bet on your ability to deliver and
sell a product that doesn’t yet exist.
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Lesson 10
“It ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you
can get hit and keep moving forward.”
—Rocky Balboa
Problem is, you don’t have enough time to throw that big
punch because you’re taking jab after jab after jab before
you can gather yourself.
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we had to generate our own buzz because we weren’t
inherently cool for being brand new anymore.
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persistence and outlasting the competition as they did to
special insight or entrepreneurial genius.
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started whispering to myself regularly, “Just keep standing.
Just keep standing.”
Others advise that big hits are the market’s way of telling
you to throw the towel before you drop for good at the
hands of an unstoppable force, Apollo Creed style. But I
don’t think most of us are in danger of staying in the ring
too long, and in this country, it’s pretty hard to hit
unrecoverable rock-bottom as an entrepreneur. I say stand.
For me the lesson on that long car ride was simple and
uplifting: When it comes to long-term success, it’s more
important to take punches than to throw the big one.
Someone else can always hit bigger than your best. Not
many can survive the full twelve rounds.
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Lesson 11
There’s always that one hurdle that won’t give. It’s the
bottleneck slowing growth. There’s got to be some big,
clever tactic that vaults you over in one swift motion.
The temptation to find a silver bullet crept in. I’d lay awake
at night wondering what the one breakthrough was that
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would free us from the relentless grind. I’d fantasize about
a big PR hit out of nowhere, a new vertical that would sell
itself, an investment that would magically grow everything,
or a new employee who had all the secrets.
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A lot of people go down in search of a silver bullet. I
decided that wouldn’t be me, and if I went down, I’d go
down firing whatever I had, silver or lead.
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Ending
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