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The Bootstrapper’s Guide to the Galaxy

WPI has an electrical engineering course titled ECE 2799. The course number is innocuous enough; it doesn’t scream “think twice” and “are you really sure?” like a 3000 or 4000 level course does.

Even the name is pretty tame: Electrical and Computer Engineering Design.

But there’s something in there that’s missing in that title. It neglects to mention that you are going to essentially launch a technology manufacturing company.

@WPI

In 7 weeks.

And you can’t do your senior project (MQP for those in the know) that’s required to graduate until you do.

And you have a budget of fifty bucks.

Ready, GO!

It is by far, the most involving and engaging core engineering course I’ve had the privilege of taking. It will chew you up, churn you around, and spit you out… and you will thank it for the pleasure and call it in the morning.

When I attended, our “company” made a safety speed controller add-on for drill presses for safe and precise machining. More recent groups have made ECG testers and high-resolution video hardware diagnostic tools. Overall, impressive stuff to conjure up complete with a hold-it-in-your-hands-and-make-it-do-stuff fully functional prototype, go-to-market business plan, market research, manufacturing strategy, and don’t forget about warranty and support, all in 49 days.

And this morning, I was given the opportunity to be a guest lecturer for the winter-installment of the course with Professor Bitar. I was brought in to talk about how we started Servprise, bootstrapped our growth without outside investment (a bit of a rarity for IT hardware companies), and share some of the lessons we’ve learned along the way.

When it came time for Q&A, one of the girls in the back row of the hall asked, “How did you learn all of this?”.

Well, to be honest… I read. A lot. About people that are much smarter and more successful than I am.

And then I do my best to learn from the mistakes they’ve made, follow the “best practices” they’ve placed like rails in front of our train, and overall, figure out what they did to win, and duplicate.

That’s pretty much it. Figure out what they did. And duplicate. So when I speak, tell our stories, and give our spiel, you can be rest-assured that I am merely regurgitating the work of the giants upon whose shoulders we stand.

The question, however, really got me thinking about the years and years I’ve spent scouring through material to learn as much as I could about business, engineering, and technology. Most of the time it was “I’ve hit a wall and want to know if someone has solved this problem before”, but sometimes it was just “I wonder what she’s been up to lately with her work”. I promised I would send a small handful of links out to the class to get them started, but I’ve decided to exceed that mark, and deliver what I promised++.

I will provide to you… The Bootstrapper’s Guide to the Galaxy.

And by provide I clearly mean throw a whole bunch of links on a page (but they have categories!), and by galaxy I mean getting your company off the ground. Plus, (bonus!) the title is borderline copyright infringement (ha HA! See you at the game, Joe! ha HA!).

While these works were instrumental in our success, your mileage may vary depending on your market, your skill, your commitment and dedication, the folks you know, your aversion to risk, the alignment of the planets, and the folks that know you.

I would love to hear about the various sources that helped others on their way.

The Bootstrapper’s Guide to the Galaxy

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 5th, 2007 at 1:11 am and is filed under Startup. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “The Bootstrapper’s Guide to the Galaxy”

  1. Frank Roche Says:
    December 5th, 2007 at 9:08 am

    This is absolutely brilliant! Excellent work (and sources). Thanks much.

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