Abstract
There’s a new mantra emerging from Silicon Valley: Strive to become self-sustaining early. This is quite a departure from past exhortations to scale quickly and at any cost. Now some investors actually urge founders to achieve profitability sooner rather than later, husband available resources and grow new assets organically, at least until proving themselves capable of delivering products of enduring value for viable markets. At that point, funders will more likely invest at valuations that aren’t overly dilutive. The founding team retains control longer.
Resourcefulness boosts control more than wealth. It begins with the very intentional art of making do, that is, bootstrapping a new venture by maximizing the utility of resources in hand. This chapter looks at how we can unpack the concept of “making do” to make it actionable.
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Kornel, A. (2018). Making Do. In: Spinning into Control. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-51356-4_6
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