Baptiste - So You Wanna Be a Tech Star?

THE

ULTRALIGHT

STARTUP

THE

ULTRALIGHT

STARTUP

Launching a Business Without Clout or Capital

Jason L. Baptiste

PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN

PORTFOLIO / PENGUIN

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.

Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto,

Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)

Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephens Green, Dublin 2, Ireland

(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)

Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell,

Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)

Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,

New Delhi 110 017, India

Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, Auckland 0632,

New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,

Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa

Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

First published in 2012 by Portfolio / Penguin,

a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright Jason L. Baptiste, 2012

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Baptiste, Jason L.

The ultralight startup : launching a business without clout or capital / Jason L. Baptiste.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN: 978-1-101-57236-8

1. New business enterprises. 2. New business enterprisesFinance. 3. Entrepreneurship. I. Title.

HD62.5.B363 2012

658.11dc23 2012000615

Printed in the United States of America

Set in ITC New Baskerville Std

Designed by Pauline Neuwirth

No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

Thank you to my mom, dad,
and coworkers at Onswipe for believing

WRITING THIS BOOK has been like starting my business. When my cofounder, Andres Barreto, and I launched our current company, Onswipe, we did so because we saw a need in the marketplace, a need for something we both wish existed (but more on that later). We saw a problem that needed fixing, so we decided to fix it.

For the same reasons, I decided to write this book.

Right now, entrepreneurship is leading the twenty-first-century renaissance, changing the world and the way we think about work. In the past, entrepreneur was, at best, a name given to rogue risk takers who couldnt accept authority and, at worst, a code word for those who were either broke and unemployed or rich and bored. Today that is no longer the case. As information and technology have spread, anyone can start a business; and in the postrecession world, in which more of us realize we cant depend on established corporations to keep us employed, entrepreneurship has become not only a respected career path but a necessary one.

The good news is that the barriers to becoming an entrepreneur are lower than ever before and, if you do it right, entrepreneurship can offer fantastic rewards. The Internet has made it possible for anyone to connect with influencers, experts, and potential customers around the world. Moreover, since new companies can exist entirely in the digital space, the costs of launching have reached unprecedented lows.

The bad news is that this trend is so new that there remain very few resources for would-be entrepreneurs, especially in the technology sector, on how to actually start a business. That is why I have written this book. When I was starting out, I had to learn a lot of things by trial and errorhow to test an idea, how to market a business, how to raise capitaland I know I could have saved myself (and my cofounder) a lot of grief if someone had given me advice on what to do. This is the book I wish I had had when I got started as a naive and passionate entrepreneur at the tender age of nineteen. I hope it will help and inspire you to pursue your passion while avoiding some of the mistakes I made.

It seems as if everyone has a brother, cousin, sister, uncle, parent, or next-door neighbor with an MBA who thinks starting a successful company just isnt possible. Thats because MBAs have been trained to look at business from a much more formal and complicated perspective than you do. When they think of entrepreneurship, they think of the traditional meaningthe one that requires a business plan, long-term financial projections, a ton of up-front capital, and an Ivy League degree just to launch a business, let alone to make it succeed. But luckily as times have changed, so have the rules.

Plus, MBAs are designed for those who want to be executives or managers at large Fortune 500 companies. But running a startup presents a completely different set of challenges, and having outside formalized training may harm your ability to move as fast as possible. So stop listening to the MBAs and any other naysayers. Its time to free your mind.

The goal of this book is to provide a simple and straightforward blueprint for creating a startup from scratchwith little up-front capital, little experience, or few connections in your industry. You will learn how to come up with an idea, build a simple first version of the product, and gain customers, then take it to the next level with fund-raising. Youll notice that although many of the principles laid out here can be applied to a lot of industries, most of them are specifically targeted to the technology sector. I did this for two reasons: 1) My experience is in this space, so I can speak about it as an expert, someone who has been there; and 2) technology is a much more accessible industry to enter than many others because it requires less capital than more traditional businesses. If you want to become the next Facebook or Twitter or Dropbox, this book is for you. You might feel very far away from reaching your goals right now, but remember, even todays most successful companies started as nothing more than a group of individuals with an idea.

This book will teach a very specific set of skills an entrepreneur needs. By the time you finish reading it you should be able to do the following things: