Bootstrapping abroad: a costly lesson

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In focus

• The reality of bootstrapping across borders
• This startup offers a free AI consent registry for creators
• Meta plans another hefty AI investment

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Hello reader,

I’ve never wanted to start my own business. I’ve seen my parents and brother struggle with theirs, and I’m not keen on putting my own savings at risk.

Covering tech hasn’t changed that. AI might help a non-technical person like me build something, but it’s no magic button.

That probably explains why I find stories about struggling founders more compelling than those about success. They make me feel better about being an employee.

Guest writer Yahya Hmida’s account of bootstrapping his AI startup abroad is a good example. A non-technical Tunisian founder based in Da Nang, he worked with a freelance team for a little over two months and got a chatbot in a dashboard, not the enterprise AI product he’d imagined.

He then bought out the team members’ contracts, restarted the build, and is still working toward his first revenue.

Hmida’s story shows that being careful with money takes more than just keeping the bills low. Affordable developers and free AWS credits might have stretched his budget, but they left two expensive questions unanswered: Does the team understand what it needs to deliver? And would a customer pay for it?

Personally, I’d want those answered before spending my savings. In another life, maybe.

Glenn Kaonang, journalist

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Top Story

What a failed first build taught me about bootstrapping abroad

What would Hmida do differently if he were to start over? Smaller deliverables and more explicit acceptance criteria for the developers’ work, he writes in his piece.

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