What?
This blog is going to focus on the situations and problems faced by tech startups which do not have large amounts of capital. I will try to help make every penny count, but that is not all. A Frugal Tech Startup typically has a very different culture and the lack of capital impacts every decision – from what kind of people to hire to which laptops to buy, from how we sell to customers to how we help our people grow. I hope to guide such startups make many such decisions.
How?
There are no silver bullets, and no black-and-white answers to most questions which bother the Frugal Tech Startups. I intend to take a single question in every post and discuss it in detail. There will typically be multiple solutions presented with pros and cons of each. Sometimes, none of the options may be relevant to a specific situation. The readers will need to make their own decisions.
Why me?
I have worked at early-stage technology startups for more than a decade. I have seen them grow exponentially and contributed to that growth primarily in engineering and product management roles. I have also worked with and led cross-functional teams which ran operations, recruitment, enterprise sales, training and customer support.
All the organizations I worked for had investments and revenues which were not enough to fully fund all the ideas and dreams that we had. Necessity is the mother of invention, and the teams came up with fairly unique ideas to solve their problems without spending too much time and money. Many of the biggest successes were preceded with multiple failed experiments.
My experiences have given me a very unique perspective on common startup problems. Hopefully, it will help some of the readers and they will need to make fewer mistakes themselves.
Why now?
I had wanted to start this blog for years, and ever registered the domain, but there was always something else happening. The whole COVID-19 situation pushed me to finally get started. New startups will probably struggle to raise funding since investors will focus on supporting their existing portfolio of companies and customers will also be reluctant to experiment with a startup’s products. I believe that in this scenario, all companies should be as frugal as possible.
I also have more time now – don’t need to commute and can’t socialize, so I may as well offer some unsolicited advice to the world.
Disclaimer
Everything on this blog is my personal opinion and does not reflect on my past or current employers. I have fairly strong opinions and am not afraid of voicing them, but I also believe that if a decision has been made then it must be respected and followed even by those who disagree. As a result, those who have worked with me may find differences between what I did or said in office vs what is written on this blog – that is expected and intentional.
Secondly, every startup and every situation is unique. What has worked for somebody may not work for everybody. Please make your own decisions after weighing all the pros and cons. If you come up with a new alternative, then please do let me know – I would be very interested in your story and (with your permission) would like to update the relevant post so that others may also benefit.
The Frugal Tech Startup 