The other day Yanik Silver and Noah Kagan were discussing the value of paying for things. Their conclusion: it can give you a slight advantage.
"I pay for things cause I want that slight edge over others." - @yaniksilver
— noah kagan (@noahkagan) January 30, 2012
@yaniksilver 10000% agreed. starting to do more of this. thanks and hi-5 you soon.
— noah kagan (@noahkagan) January 30, 2012
These days the things that separate you from the top of the pack and the second tier are so small that anything you can do to get a leg up on the competition is worth it.
Even as a bootstrapped startup we've definitely noticed this as well and it's why we've found it worth it to pay for things that makes us more successful.
Some examples:
Tools: we spend $50/mo on Olark so we can talk to customers on our site at anytime. Makes us money and it's one less thing to build
Freelancers: people who have stronger skill sets in areas we are weak are great places to pick up the slack. This also frees up our time to work in areas where we can add more value.
Trips/lunches/dinner: a meeting with the right someone can pay off leaps and bounds. We've bought drinks and food for people who we thought could help us simply becuase we wanted to hear their thoughts on a specific topic.
Obviously, it's easy to take this too far. If you're bootstrapped you can't start throwing money around like you've raised $10MM from a few powerhouse VCs.
But if you can make a solid return on investment or stay ahead of the competition without heavy expenditures then it's worth the cost.
Using Olark will let us launch our app months sooner and we have way more confidence in success because of the number of people we've had the chance to talk with.
For a measly $50/mo we have better support than 99% of web apps and one of the fastest ways to do customer development. That's an advantage we can take to the bank.
