A Flow Burn

14 May 2012

Andrew Wilkinson of Flow, talking straight about how he and his cofounders bootstrapped the product side of the company without VC funding or working eighty hour weeks: > Instead of distracting ourselves building pitch decks and flying all over the country, we allocated about 25% of the team’s time to client work and used that money to cover our development costs. This is roughly the same bootstrapping strategy that we’ve been taking with RiverGlide. We run a profitable consultancy company because we genuinely enjoy helping people do what they do, but better. Our numbers are currently inverted, however: roughly 75% of the team’s time is dedicated to fee earning client work and the remainder is spent on developing alternative sources of revenue and pursuing our myriad ideas for “making things easier”.

So far, it’s resulting in a slow-burn: We maintain a predictable income, which stops us worrying about money, gives us the head-space to deliver great consulting services to our clients and focus on other creative endeavours that interest us. It’s an exercise in patience.