Bootstrapping Ideas from a Successful B2B CEO
I love reading how-I-did-it interviews with successful start-up CEO’s! Especially entrepreneurs that share how they grew their small businesses by bootstrapping—pure gold. If you’re a B2B small business owner looking for real world examples of growing a small business, you’ll get great ideas from a NY Times blog interview with CEO Elizabeth Charnock of Cataphora.
You’ll get insights about how Charnock grew the software company from 13 employees in 2002 to 60-plus employees today.
Bootstrapping Lessons from CEO Charnock
Make all employees owners of the company. Most start-ups can’t pay big salaries so providing stock options is a great way to go. Offering stock options in lieu of a big-company sized paycheck also ensures you’re recruiting people committed to making your business a success.
Mentor employees into managers. Charnock explained that one of her biggest challenges was finding qualified Silicon Valley employees on her start-up budget. Senior managers, in her experience, were looking for large salaries—even at a start-up. So early on she made a decision to hire good people and then help them grow into managers by doing, in her words “large amounts of personal mentoring”.
Personal mentoring is rare in my personal experience in the start-up environment of the 1990’s. Kudos to Elizabeth Charnock!
Use public relations and marketing effectively. I’m betting many folks recruited and mentored by CEO Charnock are in marketing because Cataphora is doing a bang up job of getting its story out.
Surf around Cataphora.com and you’ll see prime examples of effective marketing. The company uses both traditional marketing/public relations and social media marketing. Here is its news page.
Its news page shows that they’ve been ‘getting ink’ in tech publications since the beginning of the company. They have positioned CEO Charnock as a thought leader. Here’s a column written in 2004 (2 years after launching) about a panel Charnock participated in on the topic of the malware threat. Media exposure like this is a big win for any business—especially a start-up.
Build a B2B team or group blog. My personal favorite is the Cataphora team blog, Catablog. Well, the catchy name helps.
The post titled, What is the ‘Digital You’? demonstrates how to effectively use your business blog to share your company culture. The author wrote about how two major company events taking place that week came together.
- The new book, E-Habits, by CEO Elizabeth Charnock was published
- Digital Mirror, new software for a brand new segment (consumers) was released
She explained how employees really pulled together to make sure the new software was ready at the same time the CEO’s book was given an early release by the publisher.
A blog post/article like this one maximizes Cataphora’s blogging efforts because:
- They didn’t simply republish a corporate news release on the blog (a big no-no in my book)
- For bloggers/journalists that scour blogs for story ideas, they provided a view inside the company’s culture. They shared how excited the team was about the new software and the CEO’s book being published.
- The post is (yet) another chance to explain the concept of the new software “Digital You”
- It summarizes the E-Habits book theme and positions Digital Mirror software by explaining, “Cataphora designed the Digital Mirror software to complement the ideas introduced in the book. Digital Mirror provides users with a reflection of their digital universe and their role within it.”
- The blogger invites us to watch here for more news as ‘Digital Mirror’ expands to email and social networking.
This is smart corporate story telling. I’m hooked!
If you’re looking for ideas on how to bootstrap a start-up, increase the visibility of your business and to position your company or yourself as a thought leader, check out Cataphora and its company blog. Click here for the complete interview.
Also, visit Adriana Gardella’s blog, You’re the Boss. She publishes great stuff on ‘The Art of Running a Small Business’.
Photo: iStock.com
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Category: B2B, Small Co. Successes
This site is for businesses who want to find more customers by using smart website and business blog content and for startups who want to grow their companies on a limited budget. 
I love the concept of making employees owners. it is like the kid that paid for their first car vs. being given their first car. They will take care of it, they will keep it clean, and they will make sure there is air in the tires so the car is running well. Just like the car owner the owner-employee will take the same great care of the company.
Josh Bulloc
Kansas City, MO
How can I help?
Hi Josh,
Thanks for the well-running car image–very cool! Let’s hear it for well-run bootstrapping & marketing ideas.
Best,
Cynthia
Bootstrapping in business means starting a business without external help or capital. Such start-ups fund the development of their company through internal cash flow and are cautious with their expenses
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