Presentation from Barcamp Memphis 2011. Topic - Bootstrapping

1. Bootstrapping Best Practices
from The Pie Guys
www.workforpie.com

2. Basic Tenets
Spend the money you have on the things that matter most
(for us, this was design)
Don't compromise vision/culture for speed or savings
(really think about what using crowdsourcing sites or outsourcing
design/development means for your company)
Communicate in a format that remembers for you
Try everything at first; quickly figure out what works

3. Four Categories, Links, Demos
Tools for GSD (getting stuff done)
Tools for Communicating
Tools for Learning
Extras

4. Tools for GSD
Development
Design/User Experience
Business
Marketing and PR

5. Deployment/Infrastructure
Category Tool Description Link
Code Hosting/ Github Git. https://github.com/
Collaboration
Bitbucket Git and Mercurial. https://bitbucket.org/
Cloud Hosting Rackspace Cloud Servers. http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/
Cloud Files (CDN).
Gondor Effortless production django https://gondor.io/
hosting.
Heroku Ruby, Node.js, Clojure, Java, http://www.heroku.com/
Python, Scala
SMTP SendGrid Email Delivery. Simplified. http://sendgrid.com/
SMTP settings/ REST API

6. Open Source.
Linux. Python. Django. PostgreSQL.
nginx. gunicorn. jQuery. memcached.
Celery. RabbitMQ. Redis
django-avatar, django-bcrypt, django-celery,
django-cumulus, django-extensions, django-messages,
django-sentry, django-registration, django-relationships,
django-social_auth, django-taggit, django-axes.
Fabric. requests. tablib. iPython.
py-OpenSSl. python-cloudfiles. python-openid. oauth2.
python_bitbucket. hn-api. py-githup. python-cssmin.

7. Design/User Experience Work
Category Tool Description Link
Drawing/Design Gimp Like photoshop, but free! http://www.gimp.org/
Aviary Web-based photo/vector/design http://www.aviary.com/
thingy
Mockups Balsamiq Mockups that should look like http://www.balsamiq.com/
mockups
Whiteboard Oldie but goodie (snap a photo!) http://www.ideapaint.com/
Outsourcing 99 Designs Crowdsourcing logo/illustration http://99designs.com/
design
Color Color Scheme Create and share color schemes. http://colorschemedesigner.com/
Designer
Kuler Create and share color schemes. http://kuler.adobe.com/
Typography TypeKit Huge selection of fonts, https://typekit.com/
affordable, easy to use.
Google Web Free. Easy to use. Smaller http://www.google.com/webfonts
Fonts selection.

8. Business Type Work
Category Tool Description Link
Money Mgmt. Excel/Google All you'll need unless you're https://docs.google.com/
Spreadsheet making serious bills
Mint Works well enough, and it's free https://www.mint.com/
Keeping Track of Dropbox Awesome across most https://www.dropbox.com/
Things platforms. Sharing also!
Google Docs Sharing makes docs great https://docs.google.com/
Project Mgmt Github Issues Issues tracker with a sweet https://github.com/
mobile app
Basecamp Costs money, but pretty good http://37signals.com/
Asana and Newcomers, but interesting https://trello.com/
Trello http://asana.com/

9. Social Media/PR Work
Category Type Communities
Social Media Social Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, Angel List,
LinkedIn
Q&A Quora, Convore, Stack Exchange
Location Foursquare, Gowalla, Yelp
Newcomers chime.in, pinterest, turntable.fm, IRC
Email Personal Gmail/google apps, tout, wisestamp, rainmaker
Newsletters, etc. Mailchimp
Social Social Media Tweetdeck, ifttt
Management

10. Tools for Communicating
Google Chat (and the phone, occasionally)
What's great about google chat is that it remembers what
you've talked about. It's searchable!
We use google chat, skitch, youtube, image search, etc.

11. Tools for Learning
Development
Design/User Experience
Business
Marketing and PR

12. Learning about Development
Codecademy - http://www.codecademy.com/#!/exercise/0
Treehouse - http://teamtreehouse.com/
Lynda - http://www.lynda.com/
Github - https://github.com/
LPTHW - http://learnpythonthehardway.org/
Django - https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/intro/tutorial01/
Local user groups! (.net, php, python, wordpress, etc.)

13. Learning about Design/User
Experience
Treehouse - http://teamtreehouse.com/
Smashing Magazine - http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
CSS Tricks - http://css-tricks.com/
Books - The Art of Innovation (about Ideo)
Don't Make me Think
Movie - Objectified (on netflix streaming)

14. Learning about Business
Blogs - http://www.avc.com/,
http://www.feld.com/wp/,
http://venturehacks.com/,
http://news.ycombinator.com/,
http://steveblank.com/,
http://techcrunch.com/,
http://thenextweb.com/,
http://thisweekinstartups.com/
Books - Do More Faster, Four Steps to the Epiphany, Business Model
Generation, The Lean Startup, Startups Open Sourced (interviews
with founders), Crossing the Chasm, Steve Jobs, iWoz, The Facebook
Effect, In the Plex, Founders at Work, Atlas Shrugged
Founders' Dinner Meetup!

15. Extras
Twitters -
@ericries - Eric Ries of Lean Startup fame
@fredwilson - avc.com
@bfeld - Brad Feld
@parislemon - MG Siegler
@swombat - Daniel Tenner (A Smart Bear)
@Scobleizer - Robert Scoble (he tweets a lot though)
@FAKEGRIMLOCK - Giant Robot Dinosaur
@cliffmckinney
@bkmontgomery
@workforpie
Startup.com for a nice dose of "how not to do it"
Pirates of Silicon Valley for fun