Bootstrappers Breakfast
Members of Chicago’s growing startup community gather for breakfast each month. The Bootstrappers Breakfast is like a mastermind group for visionaries.
Mastermind Group
Napoleon Hill, in his book Think and Grow Rich, described a mastermind group as a gathering of like-minded people working together toward a definite purpose in a spirit of harmony. Roughly 30 people attended the December Bootstrappers Breakfast. After splitting into groups of 8-10 people, we discovered that we have similar challenges. Ideas and solutions flowed freely among the group.
Vitamin, Aspirin, or Morphine?
A few bullets from the discussion:
- Running a business means solving problems for customers. When we solve problems, customers pay us.
- Some problems just aren’t that serious. Make sure you’re solving a problem that customers really care about. Customers have the final vote on importance, and they vote with their wallets.
- One member of the group offered a creative scale for problem severity: Is it a vitamin problem, an aspirin problem, or a morphine problem?
- Customer acquisition costs are a big factor in any pricing/business model. If a business spends more to acquire a customer than the customer’s lifetime value, then it’s time to consider another business.
- On pricing: Sometimes it’s good to choose a price that’s a no-brainer to buy. This works for products where the marginal cost of adding a customer is low. On the web, for example.
- For building web-based businesses, several members of the group prefer Ruby on Rails.
- It’s always easier to sell to someone who’s spending someone else’s money. But to do that, you need to stay within the discretionary budget of the person you’re selling to.
Common Sense
Sounds like common sense, right? Yes, it is common sense. Almost. Common sense only works if you have a firm grasp of reality. Entrepreneurs, by definition, warp reality to create new things. Sometimes our common sense becomes detached from reality.
For long term success, a business needs ongoing reality checks. A reality check from a customer is the best kind of all.