> maximize revenue and minimize the cost of doing business
Often doing both at the same time is difficult, and near impossible. To increase revenue you need a sales staff, and engineering time on building new features for new markets. Reducing costs requires your engineering staff, and maybe a business staff to negotiate with suppliers (or whatever your other inputs are). The engineers are often different kind of people. The type of engineer who is great at maximizing a process is probably not the same type of engineer who is good at rapid prototyping, and building something that "just works".
There's a transition in every startup that reaches a point of maturity where they start to build processeses, and start to rebuild existing systems. It's usually at the same time that the founding staff starts to leave.
Startups concentrate on Revenue, and hope they reach the level of worrying about costs.... and VC money makes that SO MUCH EASIER. Bootstrapping usually means you limit your input costs, which limits the rate of growth you can achieve.
Often doing both at the same time is difficult, and near impossible. To increase revenue you need a sales staff, and engineering time on building new features for new markets. Reducing costs requires your engineering staff, and maybe a business staff to negotiate with suppliers (or whatever your other inputs are). The engineers are often different kind of people. The type of engineer who is great at maximizing a process is probably not the same type of engineer who is good at rapid prototyping, and building something that "just works".
There's a transition in every startup that reaches a point of maturity where they start to build processeses, and start to rebuild existing systems. It's usually at the same time that the founding staff starts to leave.
Startups concentrate on Revenue, and hope they reach the level of worrying about costs.... and VC money makes that SO MUCH EASIER. Bootstrapping usually means you limit your input costs, which limits the rate of growth you can achieve.