Building a business without external funding

In this episode, Mattias explains the principle of bootstrapping a company and talks about why he decided to bootstrap iGoMoon - without any external help from investors or alike.

Defining bootstrapping

For Mattias, bootstrapping means building a company from nothing except personal savings, 24/7 grind and hustle, and maybe some moments of serendipity here and there. The cash basically comes from the first sales and there is no external money involved in the company.
He adds that it heavily depends on the type of company you're trying to build when it comes to deciding whether bootstrapping is an option or not. A SaaS company selling software for instance is an example that might be really hard to build without fundings -unless you have a significant amount of money on your personal bank account to start with. A kind of business that is easier to bootstrap and grow organically is one like iGoMoon: a company selling services and partnering with HubSpot.

The big advantage of bootstrapping is that you end up really owning your company (or the majority of it). On the other hand, the process of growing your business is a lot slower, since there is not as much cash flow in the early stages.

Why bootstrapping?

The reasons why Mattias bootstrapped iGoMoon are manifold. First of all, there weren't many options to start with, since Mattias did not have a lot of money of his own and a bootstrapping service company is usually not very attractive for investors.
He also wanted to really own his business and fulfill his lifelong dream of building a company that would grow over 10 Mio Euro revenue.

When potentially reaching this goal of 10 Mio Euro in about 10 years, Mattias can see himself investing some of this money into other businesses. He is also planning on being a mentor and helping other founders growing their own companies by sharing his knowledge.

💡 EPISODE TAKE AWAY
When bootstrapping a company: stay on the path and be resilient and patient.

Thank you for reading! Let us know if you want to hear more about bootstrapping a company from Mattias.