Bootstrapped

The only space in New Zealand built for the 95% of Kiwi founders who don’t want to raise external funding.

This isn’t just a guide to bootstrapping a New Zealand-based startup.

It’s a network of founders who build revenue-first startups— without the distraction of investors and pitch decks, or a bank account full of external capital.

A place to share stories, tactics and frameworks that help you get from 0 → 1.

Because every startup is bootstrapped until it isn’t.

We don’t celebrate funding rounds.

We celebrate sales.

You don’t need capital to start — but you do need community to thrive.

What You’ll Get from This Page:

Founder-to-founder learning from a community of NZ-based bootstrapped startups
Field-tested tactics real founders use to launch without money
Free tools tied to outcomes, not just categories
Founder-contributed updates, not static content

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Vivek Kumar

Product Lead at Emerge, Co-founder at Four Words, Rinse Report, Secret Niche

My name is Vivek and my happy place is solving really hard and interesting problems. I have ten years of experience in starting and growing companies. I have raised capital, failed at a start up, worked on the funding side, and now am I product manager at Emerge.

Emerge- 7 Minute NZ Business Bank Account

Four Words- Custom Made Engagement Rings (bootstrapped)

Rinse Report - The Only AML/CFT Community in the World (bootstrapped)

Secret Niche- Learn how to build products people will love to buy (bootstrapped)

Connect: LinkedIn

Coming Soon: What Founders Want on Reddit

A live forum for traction-first founders across Aotearoa:

Ask real, founder-first startup questions and get direct, practical answer
Trade screenshots, landing pages, and grant application tricks that helped you ship
Follow the real-time traction other NZ founders are making right now

It’s the traction channel for the 95% of founders who are building real businesses with no funding.

Not another newsletter. Just real questions and answers from the only NZ community built around traction, not capital.

→ r/whatfounderswant

1. Got an Idea? Start Here

Answer These Questions In Order

Key Question	Vivek Says
Is the problem easily understood?	Don’t try and educate your market on a problem — this is too hard and expensive.
Who has the problem?	This should be easily defined so finding customers is not expensive.
Are they willing to pay for the solution?	It should be assumed as a paid piece of work.
Can you build/perform the solution?	Do you know how to build/solve the solution?
Is the amount that customers willing to pay lower than your hypothesised service costs?	Make sure you are profitable!

A Simple Example

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Is the problem easily understood?

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Who has the problem?

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Are they willing to pay for the solution?

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Can you perform the solution?

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Is the amount that customers willing to pay lower than your hypothesised service costs?

2. How to Test, or Validate, Your Idea

Validating the Problem

Simulate 'purchase now' experience in the form of a simple e-commerce checkout or a pricing page leading to a 'We are not ready yet' page, 'out of stock' message

Find five people who are in that market segment on your own. If you this isn’t easy, you have either picked a market segment too small, or one that is too hard to reach

Move in with the customer - enables the creation of products that are not just technically sound but also resonate with the target audience on a more personal level.

Validating the Market

Create cheap or free classified postings soliciting purchases, sign-ups, or feedback from potential customers.

Gauge customer interest in a problem by arranging a live event around solving it.

Produce and sell a physical and analog version of your product to validate the value of your content rather than the form it's presented in.

Validating the Product

Build a clickable prototype on Figma or similar to customers can see what your solution will look like (specifically for web/app)

Reduce risk by offering a free trial or money back guarantee

Borrow or rent the necessary resources to test a product, rather than investing heavily in them upfront.

Validating Willingness to Pay

Get potential customers to sign a contract. You learn whether they actually want your product (that doesn’t yet exist) with much more skin in the game than merely asking them.

Identify and target customers who are likely to advocate your product and set up referral codes and analytics to track share rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate. Consider how to incentivise both the advocate customer

Make potential customers go extra lengths to get something done. The higher the hurdle, the more validity you can attribute to your results.

3. Always Sell Before You Build

You don’t need a product to start selling. You just need something people want — and a way to take their money.

Pre-sales > Product: Building first is expensive. Validate before writing code.
Best-case: Collect cash upfront (like Kickstarter). Second-best: get a signed MoU. Worst-case: Building your product that takes ages without paying customers.
Only build the thing that directly solves the customer's problem. Cut everything else.

Solve a problem you get paid for. Not for something that is nice to have.

It’s more important to have paying customers than it is to have a product.

Some say you need to build audience, then monetise. This isn’t always the case. Sometimes cold calling/emailing works fine.

Tactic	Works For	Tools	Outcome
Sell services before building anything	Solo service operators	Gumroad, Calendly	First $500 earned, validates niche
Build a landing page for waitlist	SaaS/Tool founders	Carrd, EmailOctopus	Early demand signal from ICPs
Launch a paid info product	Creators	Canva, Stripe	Validates messaging + value prop
Use Upwork job filters to test pain points	Ideation-stage founders	Upwork, ChatGPT	Talk to real buyers immediately

MVP ≠ bad product. It’s the smallest build that solves the customer’s problem.

Don’t polish. Solve just one pain point especially when you are getting started. Build only what’s needed to deliver promised value.

Hnry started as a spreadsheet template.

How to Sell Before You Build- No Code Tools to Make a Sale

Step	Tool	URL
Calling/emailing customers	Custom domain	cloudflare.com
	Gmail	http://mail.google.com/
Make a simple landing page	Umso	https://www.umso.com/
	Typedream	https://typedream.com
Collect emails or early interest	EmailOctopus	https://emailoctopus.com
	ConvertKit	https://convertkit.com
Take payments	Gumroad	https://gumroad.com
	Stripe NZ	https://stripe.com/nz
Collect user feedback	Tally	https://tally.so
	Google Forms	https://forms.google.com

Pre-Sale Examples That Work

Get money as fast as possible.

Offer something simple now, and deliver it in 2 weeks.

Example: “Buy now, and I’ll send you the full version on the 15th.”

Call it a beta. You get early users and real feedback.

Example: “You’ll get early access. I’ll ask for feedback before I launch publicly.”

Not ready to fully commit? Charge a holding fee.

Example: “Pay $20 now to reserve a spot. I’ll invoice the rest once it’s ready.”

4. What Other Bootstrapped Founders Actually Did

What They Tried	What Happened
Corinna Stukan from Insights Driven PM put her hand up to do talks around New Zealand for free	Has an e-book that is globally recognised. Does talks and consulting all around the world.
John from Opaque asked his gym if he could take some videos for weightlifters in a tournament	Has found a niche in the health and fitness space doing videos, creating websites and setting up e-commerce
Founders from Four Words got their own engagement rings made first. Asked their friends if they would like to get a lab grown diamond as well for half the price of traditional retailers	Got three sales from friends and family. It was enough capital to get going.
Karthik created videos on YouTube for QAs to upskill	Has over 100,000 YouTube subscribers and sells courses on Udemy.

5. Legal Setup for $0

You can start legally in NZ without capital.

If you are a sole trader, your business IRD number will be the same as your personal IRD number

Keep track of income with free tools: Wave, Notion, or Google Sheets

Optional: Register for GST only when you cross $60K. I would register for GST on registration of NZBN to claim back on expenses.

Use Emerge for a free sole trader banking account. Get set up in minutes. It has all the tools to make tax time super easy (i.e., receipt capture, auto-transfers for tax planning and virtual cards for expense management. If you get paid by invoicing, Hnry is a great option which also takes minutes to get set up. Both are great tools.

As a sole trader, you probably don’t need Xero.

Once you have consistent and growing revenue, form a company and use a Deed of Assignment to transfer IP.

If you're validating before you sell, don’t do any administration or banking set up. This should only be done when you are going after your first sale.

6. FAQ: Common Bootstrapping Stuck Points + What to Do

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I’m nervous to charge money.

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I can’t find real demand / It’s hard to sell.

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My idea is not landing or converting.

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I don't know what to build.

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I don’t know if this is 'big' enough.

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I don’t know if I am doing the right things

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Spending too much time in administrative work

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I don’t know if I should quit my job and go all in

7. Patterns & Anti-patterns: The Do Not’s and Do’s of Bootstrapping

❌ Do Not

Spend forever on your product without any customer interest
Delay asking for money because you want to build trust
Spend ages on branding, website or business cards
Do surveys

✅ Do

Talk to customers as early and often as you can
Understand that trust develops by charging and delivering on your promise
Make sure the experience is amazing so that customers refer you

Talk to actual customers and try to get them to pay you

Emerge

https://www.emerge.nz

A better business bank account

Emerge is a digital business banking platform for NZ companies, offering no monthly fees, instant setup, and Xero integration. It’s not a licensed bank yet but securely holds funds with ANZ.

NZ’s first challenger bank - open a business account in 7 minutes.