The Startup Serial 6: Money Matters
I’m going to start this one by saying this: we are poor.
Which could sound strange to some people who are used to the news of startups being funded here and there. Not in our case. This is not ‘that’ kind of a startup story.
You see, we’ve bootstrapped this thing from the core. Spent minimal amount of money as possible. Partly out of necessity and partly out of want.
It’s certainly not pleasant to be in this state. It has been a very chaotic year, financially speaking. Both James and I have been keeping up with our lives by working on other things.
I have several freelance jobs. The main freelance job I have is translation. I’m translate Korean academic papers into English. If I am lucky, sometimes I get papers about history, economics or literature. If I am not so fortunate, then I get something like architecture, or engineering. All in all, it’s not easy money.
Occasionally I would get freelance work related more to Tabulit, like editing novels or proofreading, but it’s rare. Certainly unreliable.
I do some work for my parents as well, help them out during the busy times. That gives me a bit of an ‘allowance’.
Then I have my personal savings, which is dwindling quickly as of the moment, especially after the reboot decision.
All of that combined I can barely keep my head above the water.
Same goes for James. He used to do translation as well, but now he is working with another company, technically part-time, but nearly full-time.
Then, there’s the expense side. Specifically in terms of life expenses.
Doing freelance work barely keeps my monthly expenses up, so that means cuts everywhere.
I’ve started to wear my glasses more and reserve the few contact lenses I still have, because I have no money to buy more contacts, and I don’t envision I will have money for contacts in the near future.
One time when Domino’s Pizza did a 50% off sale on all their pizzas for a week, MJ and I ate pizza almost everyday for that week. 12 dollars for a large pizza is hard to pass up.
Recently it was my birthday, and I my girlfriend got me a pretty nice set of things: a pair of shoes, two pairs of shorts, and two shirts. I was really happy about it, particularly because I had realized how I hadn’t gone shopping for cloths in a very long time. I was basically wearing out many of my cloths. The pair of H&M jeans I had bought 3 years ago were tearing at the knees, and I was still wearing them, because people do that apparently, and that way I don’t have to buy new jeans.
A pair of shoes that I had bought more than 4 years ago had finally met its end last week. It basically ripped at the heel. I had never seen a pair of leather shoes do that, but this was a pair of Aldo shoes (they are really meant to last a year at best).
At first I did restrain myself from buying cloths because of money troubles, but gradually, I had forgotten about it. So it was good that Sarah bought me some new threads.
Also, I’ve given up buying Starbucks coffee. I only drink coffee out of the machine I have at home (or at a breakfast diner, because they refill coffees). If you know me, that is a big deal.
Going out to eat is now a fearful experience, because I know how much of a sinkhole it can be in terms of money. I try to host potlucks so that I can ask if I could keep the leftovers.
I’ve asked my parents if it’s okay to keep the family phone plan for a bit longer, since then I don’t have to pay for my own mobile plan.
I’m not too sure how James and MJ are coping, but the most recent chat I had with James about this subject led to a short answer of: “Alex, I’m fucking poor as hell right now.”
At least for personal expenses, we can make cuts. Business expenses are less malleable.
For instance, business registration fees are something we can’t circumvent. We also have our Google Apps fees, because we need reliable email, and festival registration fees, because we need to get out there at some point.
We’ve also had some hiring expenses. Hiring Mina and Chelsea as contractors was a decision that was made after how we saw that the equity-sharing mode wasn’t really working with our former designer. Also, MJ and I were totally stuck on design, as we had mentioned before.
Hiring Isabelle as an illustrator was something we did after deciding to make some original comics that we have complete creative control over. She also makes our covers, and helps with promo material.
One could say that we could have just done none of this. Maybe we could have not registered as a business, just start things more informally. Maybe just have a standard Gmail instead of having an actual domain name email. Perhaps do the designs ourselves. Forget the comics, just be the platform that we said we would be.
Well, turns out, in the last 7 months or so, we’ve learned the hard way that all these expenses are needed. If we want to walk, talk, and act like an actual business, there are minimum requirements. If we want to apply for grants or get funding, there are costs to be paid. If we want to keep ourselves flexible and enable ourselves to do new things constantly, something’s got to give. You don’t have to crack the entire carton to make an omelet, but you do need a few.
We do try to save from our business expenses, like lunch. As everyone who follows this series might know, we go to a place called Opiano many times for our dietary (not necessarily healthy) needs.
However, there are times when we also cook lunch ourselves, because it saves money. Or sometimes we’d go for the cheap sandwich place for lunch. 3 dollars for a sub. That’s unbeatable.
We do this because we might also have surprise expenses incurring. Take for instance, our trip to Toronto. That cost money, but it was critical for our development process. It was also a last minute decision. Things like that will keep on happening, and if we don’t have the cash ready for it, we can’t jump on them as we go. Often the expenses that pop up like a Whac-A-Mole machine are actually the ones that we can’t skimp out on so easily. We can try, like sleeping at a university dorm instead of an Airbnb, but a lot of the times it’s basically trading massive inconvenience for a few dollars.
So it’s hard. We also have zero budget for marketing, so that’s a great sign of things to come. The ‘fund’ that James and I put together will dry up quickly when August comes. We are flashing red everywhere, and it seems that help is as good as calling 911 on a sinking ship in the middle of the Pacific.
It’s okay though. We’re always going to be short on money for at least several years into the future. I’m just really surprised that we made it this far, with so little cash in hand.
Certainly, I do dream of a day when some news of funding will save us from our financial troubles, enable us to hire people, expand our operation, and attempt crazier things.
And what’s more, I can shed all my freelance obligations. I can stop working on other things on weekends and enable myself to working on Tabulit 7 days a week. That would be a dream.
However, that day is not coming anytime soon, and I refuse to sit and wait for some pennies from heaven to solve our problems. I also refuse to waste my time in pitching to 200 different investors in the hopes that one of them will fund the company that’s not even there. I’d rather hit the ground running. Go hard or go die.
At the end of the day, all that matters is getting it done, making it happen, whether with 100 dollars, 1,000 dollars or 100,000 dollars. It’s about what we can do with the resources we have. Heck, if I can pull all-nighters and get it done for 100 dollars, so be it.
We’re ready for the storm.
