Creative Constaints

Wonderful businesses at the early stage need constraints.

Growing up, my parents came up with a really great rule around Christmas: We had to make the gifts for our parents, never buy. This led to some incredible presents!

• We made videos

• We made art work

• We made music

• We made board games

It became a silent competition in reference to which of my siblings made the best gift each year.

That constraint around “Not Buying”, led to some of the most creative projects I had ever built.

Constraints are important to innovations in products and businesses. In startups there’s normally a natural constraint around capital which leads to creative decision making around building products. It forces you to consider whether you have the resources on hand to solve the problem you need to solve, and how can you do it for the lowest cost.

The way you make decisions when you have NO money becomes the culture of decision making for the company. At Boost VC we say “Be the cockroach”, and that comes from the number of companies that figured out the creativity of not having money, and succeeded in building a business.

There are certain teams that successfully fundraise large amounts of money and then change the way they were doing things! Just because you raise capital it doesn’t mean you should lose your scrappy hustle. These teams often run out of money very quickly.

To quote my Dad, “Raise as much money as you can, and pretend you only have half of it.”

People who have money, spend the money. Those who don’t, can’t. This difference leads to innovation and discipline around spend.

Boost VC has spent a decade investing in founders who struggled to fundraise but built wonderful businesses. Building a healthy discipline in capital allocation early on helps your company in the long run… and short run… It just helps!!!! So go build some “Creative constraints” for yourself today.