Bootstrapping, continued!

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The recent weeks have been like a roller coaster ride!

While the global economic situation is not exactly ideal to jump into a new venture, bootstrapping GrandCentrix has been so much fun so far. I’ve been talking a bit about how easy it has become to deal with most of the low level standard tasks you’ve got to do.

In the past two to three weeks the GrandCentrix team and I have started entering into discussions with a couple of industry players, that we have come to appreciate over the years. The interesting aspect of this is, that while these folks did or still do run billion dollar companies, they’ve remained pretty accessible. And their precise advice and market perspectives have helped us a lot to further narrow down our go-to-market ideas. (It’s also one of the reasons why we’re still holding back our marketing folks and stay below the radar for a few more weeks.)

This week has been very intensive for me. I’ve met Steve Chambers who runs Nuance Mobile Division and is probably the most precise analyst when it comes to how mobile input patterns evolve. Nuance owns T9, T9Nav and acquired SNAPin which does application launching by keystroke interception (in a nutshell). Steve is an exceptionally person to talk to and will definitely have an influence on parts of our strategy.

We also sat together with Paul Wahl, former CEO of SAP Americas and Ex-Siebel COO. The amount of stuff you can learn from somebody who discontinued a product line like SAP R/2 and growths the next major version (R/3) to a world market leadership position is enormous. During the two hours Paul provided us with his crystal clear and straight forward advice as to how to move forward in some key areas of our undertaking. I hope we can win Paul as one of our constant advisors. We are working on that! :-)

I love being self-employed for various reasons. It’s not so much the often overrated “freedom”, because ultimately you’re not that free anyway. You’re driven by your will to succeed. You cannot rely on others paying your paycheck at the end of the month. You’ve got to be passionate – every single day.

What I definitely do like most about starting a new venture is this kind of very rewarding networking. It helps you doing the best thing for your business. It also is extremely valuable on a very personal level, and helps growing yourself.

Next week will be almost as busy as the one laying behind. I keep you posted!