Screw Outside Funding. Keep Your Startup Simple And Keep Control – with Amit Gupta

Amit Gupta, PhotoJoJo, Bootstrapping, Lifestyle Business

Are you sure you want to spend time pursuing outside funding?

Amit Gupta has had it both ways. Today he’s running PhotoJoJo, a “lifestyle business” that doesn’t need outside funding and kicks off real profits. But before that, he ran The Daily Jolt, an angel funded company.

Amit Gupta

PhotoJoJo

Amit Gupta runs PhotoJoJo, a “lifestyle business” that doesn’t need outside funding and kicks off real profits.

Here are 2 questions from our 50-minute interview (which you can download now).

Andrew: What’s the difference between running a lifestyle business and a funded company?

Amit: I think it makes my lifestyle a lot more sane than it was in 2000, when I was running The Daily Jolt, because back then we had such high expectations and we needed to hit these crazy targets to raise the next round. And then we had to hit more crazy targets to hit the next round. And even more crazy targets to get acquired or to IPO.

And now we can set sane goals that we can achieve and then grow based on money that is coming in–not money that’s being given to us by investors. And it’s nice. I like it.

Andrew: If you don’t have funding, you need to keep it simple. How simple is your businesses?

PhotoJojo is a brand devoted to making photography more fun. We do that in two ways.

1) We have an email newsletter where have fun photography projects and tips and ideas to get you out shooting more and more creatively.

2) We have a store where we sell really fun photography stuff.