This past Saturday I was a featured speaker at the Stockholm School of Entrepreneurships’s Start-Up Day. My session was titled – Informal Resource Acquisition. The conclusion was the level of resourcefulness of the entrepreneur and his or her team is a key determinant in entrepreneurial success. Further, the fewer resources (including money) that you have to get from external parties (investors, banks, etc.), the more of the company you will get to keep when and if you ultimately do have to raise external capital.
Along those lines, I just found a great little article from the Wall Street Journal that is right on point. It is the story of that one of the original viral websites – HotorNot.com. After it’s launch in 2000, the founder calculated that the bandwidth charges (which remember were much higher then) would cost him a $100,000 a month. The article details how his resourcefulness spared him from paying a single cent.
