How To Start a Business With NO MONEY

when you start a business you start dreaming about ruling the world and living in a house like that but when you're just starting out you have nothing and today I'm gonna prove you that you can start a business with zero dollars so if you're interested in starting a company without any budget continue watching this video [Music] now first of all let me give you a couple of examples of people who started with zero money and they were actually failing at the beginning whole food store the guys who started it they first relied on their parents and Friends money and when they started the first store they were actually running out of cash they were kicked out of their apartment and they had to live in their whole food store Airbnb it started with Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia realizing that people need places to stay and they started renting out their extra bed in their apartment and this is how the whole Airbnb started did they have money no they didn't they just had their passion they had their talent and this is how they started a billion dollar company the whole Silicon Valley started from a garage Hewlett and Parkers started their company at their parent's garage Google do you think Sergey Brin had billions of dollars to code the whole thing no Google was his research project at Stanford and then he realized the algorithm is actually worth something and he started working on that language chip story Dimitri and I started linguae trip with $300 initial investment to just register a company and then we used money from a first client to build a website and then we used our money from the second client to go to the UK and sign up more schools for the platform so basically you don't need a lot of money to start a company you need a lot of passion and you need a good idea now there are some types of businesses that actually require raising money and when you're thinking about your business idea you need to really decide whether you need that money or not because for example if you're building a bakery if you're starting a consultancy business if you are creating a store online you don't really need initial investment yes you need to come up with a product you need to think what are you gonna sell so what are your skills what is your experience what is that product that you're selling for that type of thing you don't really need a lot of money I was here seeing a zero cash because you can set up everything online however if you're building something like some people I know they're building a supersonic jet company oh yeah you totally need an initial investment but this is completely different stories so if you're building something that can be venture-backed and VC's venture capitalists back businesses that could grow to over a billion dollars so always ask yourself can this business be worth a billion dollars and if yes then you can raise money from angel investors but you really need to be sure that you're building something unique but it's gonna be scaling really fast because if it's just another you know bakery store and you're thinking of creating a new chain Starbucks type this is not really a VC business you can't really scale it even if you have millions of dollars sometimes you think that you need to raise money for your business just because you need to pay yourself and this is a completely different story there is money that your business needs and there is money that you need and this story with the money that you need is sold in a different way it doesn't mean you need to raise money for your business that means you need to save some money for yourself and I would say have at least six months of run right when I started a business I lived with my parents and I ate my parents food I relied on their salaries I didn't have a lot of savings but I was also 21 years old if you're older if you have a family if you have responsibilities like maybe you already have a mortgage or whatever I would advise you to start thinking about your business while working for somebody else so you work for somebody else you spend your evenings and your weekends thinking about your business idea and saving money so again you need to have at least six months worth of run-rate in order to start your own company and not run out of money right away sometimes I feel that you want to raise money for your company just because you need another approval not because you really need their money but just because you want to hear it from somebody else like yes your business idea is worth something because it seems that there is no other way for you to know whether your business idea is worth it unless somebody invest in it but there's a thing you can do you can run a very quick trial and I've done that on Silicon Valley girl I've done that with some of my products I run ads before actually creating the product I agree a simple landing page which can be created for free I create a very simple offer and I ask people to sign up and then you spend maybe okay fifty dollars on Facebook ads but that would already show you the conversion rate that would already show you whether there's interest for your product again with linguae trip we started by doing everything manually yes we had an idea of this amazing automated platform but it later took us three years to code it but I was really really happy that we already had clients that were paying because they were just proving that our idea is worth it and I knew I'm gonna make life easier for them so try and run a small trial maybe ask people to sign up for an email maybe provide a service to your friends because I guess a lot of people who are starting their businesses right now they are relying on their own experience they are relying on their own area of expertise maybe it's a free consultation maybe you here doing a social media gig then do something for free ask for views and this is another way for you to understand whether the business idea is worth it and get some reviews as well [Music] and a guy with whom we started a company with zero well that was $300 initial investment to register the company but or that was it give advice to people who are in the same situation right now just so guys you should remember that nowadays almost every single idea can be test without money so your perception that you have to have like rich parents of friends a million dollars to start the business is completely wrong so the good news that now it's very easy to start second I think the most important thing to understand was the key value of your product that you are going to make and test this straight away yeah so the key value as I mentioned will probably be your expertise will probably be a feature that you think is gonna make your product different for us it was first of all zero Commission's on linguae trips so basically when we started a lot of agencies charge their fee on top of schools fees and we decided to go without that and the second hypothesis was that people would be happier to book online but the first online platform didn't really have anything in the back end in the back end there was marina processing all the bookings and this is how we realized that the idea is actually working yeah and Berger and was hard because it wasn't enough like landing page controller construction so it's not like that but now you have like hundreds of different companies who can help you with the landing construct landing page without any coding background except payments etc etc so now it's even easier than my than five years ago one of the companies that helps you test out your idea for free is called turbo page and Roma page is a peer-to-peer social and commerce platform where you can set up your landing page for example if you're selling services or you're selling a consultation you set up a page there they don't charge you anything to set up they help you process the payments they help you interact with your customers so basically there is zero upfront fees and hey you can start with zero dollars on trova page you can offer any service as long as and you know there is demand for it for example it could be as common as photography services tutoring translation or ask creative a suffering home cooking meals helping your neighbors to model on on demand you can manage your whole business through turbo page by creating invoices managing the times when you're available so basically anything and you might be wondering how they are making money they would charge you 10% of whatever you sell through a page but good news is if you're watching this video you're getting a special promo for open trouble page they're waiving their fees for the first six months the link is below sign up to travel page and test out your business idea completely free Emily you like San Francisco are you coming back I know it's super windy but quick piece of advice from me guys think about having everything about your business online in case the next lockdown happens or you know people decide to stay at home for good your visit is still gonna thrive because you know especially after this year I realize how important is to have operations online how important is to have a personal brand and how important is to have multiple sources of income because core business is basically not functioning right now because people are not traveling but we have online education I have my youtube channels you know it's so important to diversify so it's okay if your first business idea fails it's okay that your second business idea fails you know it's okay then you fail 10 times but when you test out your business idea number 10 I am pretty sure you're gonna be so it doesn't matter how many times you fall it's the matter of how many times your rice and try again another piece of inspiration for you guys when I was dreaming about Silicon Valley when I was back in Russia in saint-petersburg and her business wasn't really growing I would always look at the pictures off Golden Gate Bridge and imagine myself taking picture in front of it and I would Google you know different YC Y Combinator companies and a lot of them would have a picture with a Golden Gate and I would be like oh my god the day will come when I will stand in front of Golden Gate Bridge and take a picture and I'm gonna live in San Francisco and that was unimaginable back then but it became my reality because I started working on something that I was really passionate about and I still am very passionate about and I didn't care about having initial capital I just started because I wanted to start because I wanted to challenge myself and because I wanted to help others experience what I have experienced studying abroad sorry for all the wind this is San Francisco this is a reality you think California is all nice and you know sunny yeah it is sunny but it's really windy it is really cold but it's worth it it's so worth it and one most important thing that I wanted to remember guys is no matter how much you love the picture of yourself being this amazing entrepreneur at traveling the world and writing private jets the thing that you should love is your daily life you should love your problems you should love solving your problems in your business and you should love communicating with your clients because otherwise the whole thing wouldn't really survive if you don't enjoy the process thank you guys so much for watching this video I hope I inspired you to start right away again if you think you need some cash you can always ask your friends you can always ask your family you can always apply for a small business loan or just look for opportunities in your unity maybe there is something or somebody offering some cash to young entrepreneurs but I'm sure you can start with a zero cash after this video if you know yet subscribe to this channel hit subscribe and let's do a quick challenge down in comments below I'm gonna reply to the comments that were posted in the first 24 hours after I released this video so comment down below with your business idea and why you think it's impossible to start it without any cash and I would get back to you with my solution to your problem thank you guys so much in this video looking forward to reading your comments down below and if you're not yet subscribed to this channel hit subscribe I'll see you very soon in my next vlogs probably not from San Francisco cuz I guess this is our last week here we're going to Sonoma next and then we'll see where we're life takes us but hopefully Sonoma then Malibu then back here in the Bay Area then Russia and then Silicon Valley see ya bye