Bootstrappers Turn Time Into Resources and Possibilities For Customers

In “Our ‘For Impact’ Culture Code,” Possible Health outlined a number of operating principles and cultural values that are also very appropriate for bootstrappers.

Possible Health: Our “For Impact” Culture Code

I am a huge fan of Neil Perkin’s blog  “Only Dead Fish” and his two newsletters: “Your Weekly Dead Fish” (archive) and “Fraggl.” I followed a link from his post on “Complexity and Simplicity” to a thought provoking presentation by Possible Health on “Our For Impact Culture Code.”

Here is my take on some key concepts from the deck  (emphasis in original) that would benefit bootstrappers –as well as “non-profits.” I have added my observations in italic:

1. “Non-profit” is a legal structure, not a way of doing things. And we don’t believe that we should define ourselves in the negative. Instead, we exist to create impact.
   Observation: bootstrappers are often motivated by a desire to make an impact (in addition to a desire for autonomy) and have to focus on impact as a way to prove credibility and establish their firm as a viable alternative worthy of consideration.
2. We treat efficiency as a moral must.
   Observation: in the non-profit world this avoids the trap of excusing poor and/or inefficient execution because you are working on a “good cause.” For bootstrappers it’s second only to impact for viability.
3. If building effective healthcare systems for the poor were easy, everyone would do it. We do this work precisely because it is labeled as “impossible” by many.
   Observation: you can substitute “effective healthcare system” for whatever you own Big Hairy Audacious Goal (see “Building Companies to Last” by Jim Collins for more on this term). Bootstrappers have to work in riskier and more challenge environments because established firms are less willing to invest effort when markets with a clearer return are accessible.
4. When your outcome is impact, time  is a terrible thing to waste.
   Observation: as I have outlined in the Chalk Talk on Technology Introduction, prospects use their estimate of your “time to impact” as the single best indicator of the amount of risk in your solution. Days to weeks beats months to quarters.
5. When you’re working in the world’s most challenging environments under constant uncertainty, the way to maximize learning is to minimize the time to try things.
   Observation: any environment with high uncertainty is challenging, running smaller experiments minimizes the cost of failure and speeds learning.
6. It’s everyone’s job to turn time into resources and possibility for our patients.
   Observation: all that bootstrappers have in the beginning is their time; if they cannot create an impact and a sense of possibility in prospects they won’t prosper.

Related Startup Culture posts:

• Four Excerpts from Valve’s Employee Handbook That Belong In Yours
• Yanis Varoufakis: “Valve is an Enlightened Oligarchy”
• Netflix Culture: Freedom and Responsibility by Reed Hastings

Update June-28-2014: Guillermo Marqueta-Silbert (@guillemarqueta) tweeted a comment to the effect that the exchange rate for entrepreneur hours to impact was a function of entrepreneurial skill. I think this is a great insight and suggests a more nuanced understanding that it’s not just trying anything but trying things that flow from a deep understanding of customer situation and needs, competitive landscape, relevant technology alternatives, and market evolution. In an OODA Loop formulation–Observe-Orient-Decide-Act–the key differentiator that expertise brings is a richer and faster Orientation to the situation.