Starting a company on limited resources

I knew from the start that I wanted to bootstrap my company. I had some money saved up, but I still wanted to spend as little as possible to get up and running.

Software is one essential that can get expensive. Fortunately, a year and a half ago, I discovered Microsoft was offering a free copy of Visual Studio 2005 to anyone who watched 3 tutorials on ASP.NET. I signed up fast and watched three tutorials and in about 4-6 weeks received a full copy of Visual Studio 2005 Standard edition. It was worth several hundred dollars, so a very good deal.

Then last year, I attended a free Microsoft conference on Office 2007 and received a free license of Office 2007 Professional. Another huge savings. Visual Studio and Office were two pieces of software that I had to have to start a business. (You may argue that I didn't need Office, but I've tried several of the competitors and despite the issues with MS software in general, I still think Office is the best suite of products).

Granted, I got lucky with the MS freebies, but I've also found that a startup company can negotiate some good deals. For example, in order to write software that works with my former company's products, I needed to join their developer program. Normally it is $5000/year, but after inquiring, I discovered they have a small business price of $1500/year. (You might wonder why I couldn't get a special deal as a former employee - I wonder that myself. Although, they did let me work off the first year in consulting work.)

I have also found that some software companies, when I explain that I am a startup with limited funds, are willing to provide a discount in exchange for a testimonial or a case study of my implementation of their solution. This can potentially save thousands of dollars depending on the software products in question.

All-in-all, I have spent about $5000 on startup costs so far. Roughly a third of that has gone to my web designer, which I think has been money well spent. Another third went to a faster laptop (which was 30% off at the end of the year), a new all-in-one printer, and miscellaneous software. The rest has been filing fees, taxes, accounting services, web hosting, and misc office expenses.