SXSW Interactive Community Blog

It was a pleasure to participate in this year’s SXSW Interactive along with my fellow-bootstappers. Our panel, “Bootstrapping Your DCI Business” turned out to be just one of many which touched on the theme of bootstrapping. Some of the more notable Bootstrapping talks:  

• Jim Coudal and Jason Fried’s opening remarks espoused bootstrapping
• Craig Newmark bootstrapped Craigslist
• Burnie Burns bootstrapped Red v Blue
• Jason Kottke and Hearther Armstrong are blog bootstrappers and discussed the unique challenges of monetizing their blogs

Creators of all kinds are increasingly realizing that they can bootstrap their ventures. This is an exciting shift away from the late nineties when the ONLY way to build your company was to raise millions in VC funds (and quickly squander it away).

At The Bootstrap Network, we’ve brought together an open-source community of bootstrappers who learn the principles of bootstrapping, solve problems and help each other move through the critical ‘Valley of Death’ phase of our ventures.

We look forward to more discussions and conversations on bootstrapping!

I’ve posted some more of my interviews with entrepreneurs from SXSW:

• Matt Mullenweg of WordPress talks about the success of Wordpress, open source business models, and the future of business blogging.
• Dave Panos of Pluck tells about his entrepreneurial experience with Pluck as a venture-funded company, plus how BlogBurst can help business bloggers reach a larger and broader audience.
• Heath Row of Squidoo tells how people can make money with Squidoo, both directly and by using it to promote their expertise, as well as how it differs from (and complements) blogging, Wikipedia, and even About.com.