My first Silicon Valley Bootstrapper Breakfast (Online)

I had the privilege of attending the Bootstrapper Breakfast (https://bootstrappersbreakfast.com/) online some days ago and found it so valuable that I wanted to share with you my experience. I didn’t plan to go until the same day since I stumbled upon the event in the IndieHacker event list on the morning of the event. I had a notion that these kinds of community meetings were nice, but I got way more value than I had expected. 🤩

But first, some background. My cofounder, Curtis, and I are working on a new way for you to manage your relationships with authenticity and strategy. We’re sensing a strong desire for more tools to help humans be good humans across long distances, across impersonal technology, and across the complexity and busyness of life. NetworkingBuddy aims to help professionals and founders manage these relationships, but we are still in the early stages of this, and live it daily. So when I saw the Bootstrapper Breakfast, I thought it would be a good chance to get some outside perspectives.

It turned out to be just me and two of the organizers, Angie and Sean, on zoom. While I was a little nervous that it might have been a dud of an event (“who else is attending?”), the small turnout was very positive. Sean, Angie and I ended up talking all about Networking Buddy and the networking app space. Sean was very knowledgeable about what some apps have done in the space, some persons and resources to look into, ideas for getting market and growing and we brainstormed some very concrete ideas some of which we’re already implementing. The discussion was nonstop until the end of the session. I took lots of notes. 📝

The personal attention was really appreciated (it felt like a personal 1 on 1 coaching session), and the 90 minutes seemed to pass rapidly since there was so much to talk about (well this is my baby, so I could easily talk for hours).

So here are some key bits of value you may get from attending a bootstrappers event (no they aren’t paying me for this, nor did they ask!):

💯 Community

IndieHackers and other online founder communities are great, but you do need some real time events (ideally face to face) to build your relationships that help your business. Some of these events should be face to face (Bootstrappers Breakfast has several face to face events too across the US) as that’s the best way to build human relationships. Of course the efficiency of taking zoom calls can’t be beaten, but the strength of having an organic chat is unparalleled in the digital realm. No matter what, don’t go it alone.

💭 Idea Brainstorm

Curtis and I sorted through all the things we talked about at the Bootstrappers Breakfast and came up with a plan to incorporate some of them into our current product strategy and market testing plan. I think the ideation is valuable since you get an outsider (from your team) with different experiences give you some more neutral perspective on your business and plans. The earlier and more regularly you get this sort of advice the better.

💫 Network

Through the breakfast, I was introduced to another founder with whom I have a chat scheduled this week. His experience will be of direct benefit for our startup. The human connections that you need to build your startup are many. Observing any successful founder makes this sometimes hard to see as they don’t always highlight all the help they got along the way. But at a minimum, you want to learn as fast as possible. Besides doing customer experiments, as shown in the Lean Startup (https://theleanstartup.com/), to learn fast, you must be talking to others in your industry and collecting examples of what worked and what didn’t and acting accordingly.

🔥 Other Resources and value

We got introduced to some other resources too, and are still evaluating them. The bootstrapper meetup session was a great source of resources critical to our field. We were introduced to some concepts, books, blogs that can be very useful in developing our product so that it fulfils the user needs and lasts.

As an early stage founder, the event offered a great platform to practice explaining and communicating our business to an outsider. This helps illustrate where our logic might be weak and what else we need to refine.

✔️ Overall I found it valuable and plan to continue attending these sorts of events.

And if you want to find a way to engage your relationships in the building of your business/project authentically, check out www.networkingbuddy.com which has a great tool to do so, and a growing knowledgebase of science-based advice on growing your professional relationships for your career or business.