Financial Bootstrapping: a critical entrepreneurship skill

Bootstrapping finance involving the use of resources to start and grow a venture at the lowest possible or even at no cost, acquires especial significance in times of a credit crunch. In this paper we explore, for the first time the use of bootstrap finance techniques in a small country European case. Based on a sample of ninety-nine Portuguese firms we first determine the most popular bootstrapping strategies, and then we test a set of hypotheses involving several socio-demographic and economic variables, some for the first time in the literature. The results yield some very interesting insights on small business strategies of non-conventional methods of financing. This paper also reveals how these strategies are related to characteristics of the small business owner, namely gender and education, as well as two business characteristics of the firm, that of firm size and internationalization.