Bootstrappers was originally started to be a Entrepreneurship Development Agency in South Africa. The idea was to look what the person / community / business has to offer, equipping them to use their existing resources to be both entrepreneurial and strategic to develop wealth from this grass-root level up. The idea was brilliant, but in the execution the Agency evolved into something else altogether.
Why do I call this the story of the Bootstrapper? Bootstrapping is a Entrepreneurial term used to motivate and equip people to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. We often have access to personal resources, we have capabilities and energy, but are not using what they have the best of their advantage.
Let us oversimplify the idea into pots and pans. Your mother has a gas stove, your aunty has a pan and your uncle is a fisherman. What is missing? You need oil, gas and a few willing buyers and you have a start-up.
In spite of the need for Entrepreneurship development it seems that South Africans are blind the obvious benefits as a alternative to the socialist agenda our government is pursuing. Sadly my passion for the subject has become a frustration, and I am just to old to fight in an academic, political and business environment.
I want to talk to an audience that want to listen. People that will hear how difficult the current environment for Entrepreneurship Development is. Maybe I can motivate one person to attempt a start-up, or I can just tell someone that life is hard, life is not fair but at least it is unfair to all of us.
A bit about me. To start with, I am a bit dyslectic. And in spite of your saying that you must read more, you are going to get there – there, off-of and all those other difficult words wrong. The important thing is that it does not become a excuse to not do the things we love. I figured out, at the age of 42, that I actually like research and writing. I went back to university for 13 years part time studies. I often wish I figured that out at the age of 18 or 19.
This is thus fictionalised to give it a bit of spice, the grammar and spelling is often off target, life story of a Bootstrapper. It is a story full of success, a story of many bad decisions, a story of major loss and then relentless failure. It is important to tell the story because sooner or later every one of us will wonder if it is all worth it.
