Ideas are wonderful things. They can inspire us to work harder, dream harder, live harder. The ideas we have, these are free. Servers cost money. Health insurance costs money. Employees, computers, conference rooms, software licenses, these things cost money. Big time. So when you’re looking to nurture an idea into a business, these costs can seem daunting. For those not interested in (or who have no opportunity for) traditional funding methods such as angel investing and bank loans, how do you actually accumulate the funds necessary to really free your idea? This is the question I asked myself in late 2008. Flash forward to 2010. I’m the CEO of a (becoming successful) startup, completely bootstrapped. How did I go from cubicle worker (and part time hacker) to CEO (and full time hacker)?

Read on for the exciting preamble and the free E-book download of “Live for Free – The Chronicles of a Nerd Saving for a Startup”

So it’s late 2008. Having worked as the ‘hardcore’ CS guy at a score of jobs over the past decade, I had concerns over the (overly bland) course my career was taking. Though responsibilities and titles were ever plentiful, I had little to say in the overall direction of the companies I worked for. No matter the company, the projects began to feel less exciting. The desire to start my own company had been silently brewing for some time already, and began to occupy a greater portion of my thoughts. Like most late twenty somethings coming out of grad school could tell you, I had debt. And as a fresh graduate living in West LA, I had expenses. Specifically, as a young computer scientist I had gadget-lust related expenses. Video games, cell phones, the newest technology fascinates and drives our culture. How did I resolve these desires, raise enough capital to fund a startup, and do it without going into debt?

Grab the E-Book and find out here.

I think this should be of interest not only to those wishing to save for a startup, but to anyone who is interested in saving money, buying or selling online, or the product cycles of geek tech in general.