I Couldn’t Spend Money Fast Enough, and It Almost Killed My Startup
Being a frugal entrepreneur can help your company survive, but it can also kill it
In their earliest days, startups are supposed to be scrappy. After all, with minimal resources, they don’t have many other options.
This type of “lean” approach to building startups even has a name. It’s called “growth hacking.” You’ve surely heard the term. It’s basically shorthand for: “You’d better figure out how to get customers without spending lots of money because, unfortunately, you don’t have any.”
For most startup founders, growth hacking is a necessity. That was certainly the case for me. When I launched my earliest companies, I didn’t have any money. All I had was time, so I had to get customers by using my time as creatively as possible. This trained me to be a resourceful and frugal entrepreneur, which was great when I was running a three person startup. Heck, I remember being able to stretch a $15,000 seed grant to fund my company for four months. However, what I didn’t realize at the time was all my growth hacking and frugality was teaching me terrible habits that would make it hard for me to scale my startups into successful businesses.
