It’s a known fact that seed capital is very scarce in Italy. Entrepreneurs, which by definition are stubborn entities are therefore finding creative and cheap ways to bootstrap their startups.
Tipsandtrip was born from an idea of social media consultant Juliette Bellavita and Blogo.it CEO Marco Magnocavallo. They had the goal of launching a web app and an iphone app in 6 months with less than $10k.
How did they do it? With some great project management and a few crowdsourcing platforms. Let’s break down their costs:
- Logo design: a simple contest on 99designs with a $300 prize. 114 submissions and a professional logo in less than a week.
- Development: using DjangoPeople and Elance a very international team was born. Developers are in Argentina, Ukraine and Russia. Total cost: $5000.
- Iphone development: an italian freelance developer found on the web. Two months of work and $2500.
- Iphone icon: a dutch designer made a professional icon for $350
- Internationalization: translations in german, french and spanish. MyGengo.com and Tolingo.de. 24h turnaround and a great service. Total cost: $100.
- Hosting: pay-as-you-go cloud servers, mostly free in the beginning.
- Debug/usability: UserTesting and $100.
- Sweat Equity: Juliette and Marco put in a bit of work during weekends as project managers, designers, developers, sysadmins, etc.
Total: $8,350.
They say they’re gonna use the remaining $1,650 to fix the numerous bugs that usually come out after the launch.
We still haven’t drilled down into the app. The founders were tired of having to remember all the precious tips their friend were giving them regarding restaurants, B&Bs, shops, etc. in foreign countries prior to their trips. After looking for an online tool to annotate all this information and having found nothing really useful they decided to build it themselves.
Tipsandtrip is your portable notebook where you can write your vacation related notes and find the best tips your friends and other users make public. The app will be a crowdsourced list of the best restaurants, shops, parks, beaches, B&Bs and city spots for tourists. The app obviously geolocalizes every info and integrates with Facebook and other social networks.
They are competing in a very crowded and fragmented market but I’d say that for $10k, they’re off to a good start.
It’s a free app and you can download it here.
very interesting, thx!
Nice job guys! nice project, great implementation!!
Great example of what Guy Kawasaki (and many others to be fair) has been preaching for quite some time now. If you have a web based idea you believe in there’s really no excuse not to give it a shot.
Related to this post I also suggest 1) the StartupTools wiki (started by the awesome guys at Songkick) http://startuptools.pbwiki.com/and 2) an post I read last night about how to hire a programmer to make your idea happen (http://sivers.org/how2hire).
I agree that this app is going to face fierce competition from well funded companies, but the accomplishment so far is great so congrats and best of luck!
Also, I could use a good iphone app freelance dev… Any chance to pass the details along?
Interesting, tnx
tnx
Well done
Who needs outside investment in Italy?
By the way, I could use the iphone app freelance dev aswell…
Thinking of it, I also could use designers and wordpress programmers.
Oh, my company has grown a bit too much i guess
Hi,
I hate to ask, but where is the revenue model? From what I can see, you have half a bootstrap. You created what appears to be a cool product, but without a revenue model, you don’t really have a bootstrap. And I would say half the effort, if not 75% is in creating the revenue model…
Please do keep us posted!
[...] How to bootstrap a Startup with less than $10k. Meet Tipsandtrip. (tags: app budget cheap design development iphone startup startups bootstrap) [...]
I would appreciate a a pointer towards a lo-cost, hi-Q iPhone developer
[...] this article: Dario Fornarelli: Tipsandtrip, un Taccuino Per i Viaggi Via Web e Mobile [...]
[...] fonder une startup pour moins de 10’000 [...]
It’s stories like this which remind me why it’s so awesome to be involved with technology at this time in history, just endless possibilities and opportunities. V.inspiring!
Excellent resources. Here are two links to additional resources that might be helpful for entrepreneurs with limited budgets:
Wireframe and prototype services: http://blog.schremper.com/15-wireframe-and-prototyping-tools
Cloud storage services: http://blog.schremper.com/into-the-cloud-online-storage-services
With 99designs and Elance it can be done! Even with company registration and some serious hosting for the first few months you can still make it under $10K at the beginning. We did it with HypedSound.com recently.
Given today’s market and in this day-in-age you can get a lot with your $10k startup. I used to do free lance work on 99designs and some of the designs people create for the price you pay is unbelievable.
[...] Qualche mese fa ho ritenuto intelligentissimo oltre che interessantissimo un post fatto da Stefano Bernardi su segnalazione di Marco Magnacavallo (founder di Blogo) su come creare una startup/prodotto con solo 10,000€. Che serva di lezione a molti! Leggetelo qui. [...]
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