Bootstrapping

Folks like to see what work I’ve done for others’ companies, but this story around bootstrapped marketing was one I’ve been invited to present at startup accelerators and MBA programs.

Situation: In 2016 I co-founded Ridj-it, an outdoor event platform with carpooling from Boston to the White Mountains of New Hampshire and other outdoor areas of New England. However, my business partner Rik Ganguly and I had no actual platform as we had no technical co-founder who could build it.

Task: We needed to create a way to get users while the platform was being built as this would generate activity sooner and show proof of concept.

Action: We settled on SuperSaaS, a booking calendar Rik was familiar with in his work in public health appointment booking. The cost was free, and here’s a picture of it below.

We also lacked a key component of the business — users. We tried approaching local outdoor Facebook, Meetup, and university groups about our program, and there were no takers. So, we decided to start our own outdoor group on Meetup — Boston Outdoor Adventures — for $86.

Result: Spending $86 was well worth the cost, as within six months we had several hundred registrations on the SuperSaaS calendar and had spent only $86 on marketing. Our customer acquisition cost at the time was $0.09 and our lifetime value for those users was $65.

This bootstrapping on pre-platform technology did several things. It showed us proof of concept which allowed us to eventually garner a technical co-founder. We also had extra cash to invest in other marketing and platform enhancements. Finally, this momentum gave us street cred to pitch to angel investors and outdoor innovation events.

Here’s an article I was interviewed for in Indie Hackers talking about this bootstrapped marketing method.

This bootstrapped marketing also led to several pieces of news coverage by ABC, PBS, the Boston Globe, and other publications — all free.