It was not long ago that you were only somebody as a start-up if you could chat about how much money you had raised, at least according to our speaker last week. Forget about how much sales or customers you had the hip metric was money raised. Times change and many of the hipsters are now history, however, the uncool bootstrappers continue to do what they do, get customers and grow organically. Successful bootstrappers are becoming the rockstars of the recession.

We had just such a bootstrapping rockstar speak at The Ottawa Network “3 x 10 Boot Strapping for Success” event. Tim Upton of Titus Labs was interesting, engaging and insightful. I had a chance to chat with Tim before the event and asked him what his most important lesson learned in his bootstrapping experience. I think it is important to put things in to perspective as well.

Titus Labs started out as an IT or Software consulting business which Tim founded. The first product originated by solving a problem for one of their consulting customers. This was turned into a product which they decided to put on the internet or hang it out there as Tim said and guess what; customers started to come to them. Their first win was the Australian equivalent of Canada’s RCMP, shortly afterwards a major financial institution came on board and then it was full steam ahead. The company continued to grow organically and they have never accepted any external money, bank, VC or whatever. For the past 4 years their revenue has grown by at least 100% per year and staff has doubled each year.

Back to the original question of that important lesson learned. THE #1 lesson is get customers; they are a great source of revenue says Tim with a gleam in his eye. Titus Labs has always focused on the customer by building what they want and Titus can sell. That is the most important lesson.

Second, first most important lesson; Google is your friend. Titus first two customers were both won through Google searches.

Finally an interesting insight that I really liked being organic keeps you in check and when your resources are limited you need to be constantly re-evaluating and applying due diligence to every decision, basically the leanness of the model forces you into this state.

I also wanted to take a minute to express my sincere gratitude to Bob from IRAP for introducing me to Tim and helping get the event going. Here is Bob’s presentation on IRAP a most excellent and valuable resource for any would be bootstrapper to leverage.

Thank you Bob and Tim.

Ian Graham

Filed under: Commercialization, Entrepreneurship, Ottawa, Start-up by Ian
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