Bootstrap Network Blog: Looking big while feeling small

A big software company that we had cozied up to was giving us the opportunity to have our software be downloadable on their add-ins page.

Survival tip: The bureaucracy of the big boys is an invitation to partner

There is more of a story to it than that but the short of that story is that small companies should partner with big companies where possible. Us little guys can do things without the inertia and trouble that the big companies have. So when a big company may be making a similar product to yours that won't be ready for 18 months, they may want to partner to have a similar product on the market much sooner. Big companies have all sorts of problems getting new products to market including 18 month delays because the products needs to be translated, security checked, architectural review boarded, IRB approved, HIPPAA compliant, uncrackable by Chinese hackers, alpha, beta, gamma, integration, smoke tested and terrorist screened. That doesn't even begin to mention the MRD and adjustments to the field sales compensation plan that need to be filled out in triplicate and delivered in person to Anchorage Alaska to get the engineering resources available to fix the bugs in the product. So before I return to the story I started, the main point is that us little bootstrappers look great as an execution engine for getting real things done fast. We are always the little mammals scheming against the dinosaurs. But they know it and if you drill deep enough and high enough into the big guys there is someone who will champion partnering with you. Ask Bill Gates if you can get through to him.

Survival tip: Borrow graphics styles and get cheap illustrations

So this large software company was willing to add a link to their plugins page featuring our software and was ensured to be a lock-in for at least 45 days before anyone else would make it onto the page due to circular reasoning being used at our large partner company around obtaining the rights to change the page and the resources to do so. Bureaucracy is your friend. The first folks through may be the last. But this great opportunity included a logo at 170 X 170 pixels. As a bootstrapper my first instinct was to call the graphic arts department at my company. When I picked-up the phone I realized that the graphics department was me futzing with some old versions of Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Fireworks because it was the only thing I had handy. If you have neither try GIMP - it's a free knock-off of Photoshop.

So I created the graphic below that showed my utter lack of skill at designing logos at any size. Upon showing this to my partners they suggested that we call in favors from a graphic designer friend. Unfortunately we had already used those favors. If you have a graphic designer friend I strongly encourage pretending you are a pledge in their fraternity doing their laundry, giving them rides, cooking them breakfast, whatever you can do so that when you ask for that favor they will be there for you. Bijoy told me that he cut a deal as a revenue split on his book with a graphic designer.

But favors were not available for us. We just had me, the marketing guy who is graphically challenged. But Shelley, a key partner, suggested we look at licensing images from istockphoto.com. At first I was skeptical about doing so since licensing images normally costs billions of dollars and stealing images puts me at risk for legal action from angry mobs of photographers with deep war chests. But on istockphoto.com I was able to acquire about five icons in vector format for under $10 total that looked like professional WindowsXP graphics. They pasted into the graphics programs like champs and by copying a logo that I liked from Microsoft. While the logo isn't great, it was done the bootstrap way.