9 qualities of a successfully bootstrapped startup idea

The following is an edited excerpt from The 7 Day Startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch. The excerpt was provided by the author, Dan Norris. You can buy a copy of the book here.

1. Has enjoyable daily tasks

You often hear people say “follow your passion” when it comes to business. Thankfully, I learned early on that this is a bad idea. When I was younger I did a trial for a mechanics apprenticeship. I aced the exam, prompting the manager to ask me why I wanted to be a mechanic. I told him I was “passionate” about cars. He said, “So is Jay Leno, but he doesn’t fix cars for a living.”

If you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to be passionate about growing a business. I’ve also made the mistake of starting businesses that I flat out didn’t like. This is a motivation killer that has to be avoided.

Rather than complicating things with diagrams and rules, let’s just agree on this: It makes no sense to start a business that is going to have you doing work you don’t enjoy. That’s as far as we need to take the passion equation. Think long and hard about what your day-to-day tasks will be.

Visualize yourself doing these tasks. If you don’t like what you see, then it’s not a good business idea for you. Other than that, don’t worry about passion.

2. Product/founder fit

People talk a lot about product/market fit, but for bootstrappers the idea of product/founder fit is just as important. In my first agency, I was a poor match. I knew that, but I pushed on anyway.

Some people are perfectly matched with their companies and some people aren’t. It’s worth thinking about what skills you have, what are you known for, and where you can provide the most value. If that doesn’t line up with your business idea, then it’s going to be a long, hard struggle.

3. Scalable business model

For listed companies, if profits unexpectedly go up, the stock explodes. If they unexpectedly fall, the stock crashes. This is because businesses rarely stagnate. It’s considered unusual if a business is neither growing or contracting. Yet freelancers and small business people accept a business that isn’t growing.

They accept that the business barely generates a wage for the founder. Startup founders should have the ambition to grow their business into a larger company. If you don’t have that ambition, what you are creating is not a startup. Some businesses lend themselves to business models that have growth in their DNA.

A software as a service (SaaS) company would expect to bring in more recurring revenue each month. A local store or a franchise, however, will have fairly static (albeit cyclical) profits. Your idea is not a solid startup idea if you don’t have the capacity to make use of a profitable, growing business model.

It’s time to start thinking about how you might charge consumers and whether you could reasonably expect to grow this business idea month over month.

4. Operates profitably without the founder

Most small businesses would die without their founders. They are too tied to the delivery of the product or service, or they just don’t have enough profits to hire people to replace all of the jobs they do.

A lot of people fall into the trap of not worrying about this because they expect to “hustle” early on with little reward. It’s okay to accept that, but fundamentally there needs to be a profit margin built into the product or service you sell.

You need to be able to see a point where you can hire in staff or systems to replace you, and still continue to generate a profit. At that point it becomes a real business. Can you see your idea becoming a real business that operates profitably without you?

5. An asset you can sell

Business is not just about making money. It’s about creating something that is valuable. Not “I think what I’m doing is valuable,” but a third party validating that there is value there.

6. Large market potential

7. Tap into pain or pleasure differentiators

8. Unique lead generation advantage

9. Ability to launch quickly