Entreprenerus and Bootstrap Finance

Many entrepreneurs have used a variety of bootstrap financing methods to satisfy their ventures’ resource needs. These techniques, which may be a combination of social or economic transactions, have included purchasing used rather than new equipment, getting the “best” possible terms from suppliers, forgoing salary withdrawals from the business, bartering for goods and services, and sharing equipment with other businesses, to name only a few options. In the last few years, some scholars have begun to explore this important set of activities, bootstrap finance. The purposes of this paper are to examine bootstrap finance in its context, to show some of the techniques for and sources of bootstrapping, and to demonstrate recent use of these techniques in the United States.