Richard Jordan: Bootstrapping Christmas

So, when you start a company and you’re trying to build something really special but in a disciplined Lean-Startup/MVP/CustomerDevelopment kind of way, you spend long periods unpaid. Perhaps another post for another time is to discuss financial planning for an entrepreneurial career, including strategies for periods of both feast and famine.

That means being careful with the family budget when it comes to things like Christmas. I guess I have been hearing a lot of fellow entrepreneurs bitching about unpaid periods recently and should add this to a series called “quit bitching or quit startups”. Well, I’m an entrepreneur, but far more important than that, I’m a dad. This Christmas Ethan, who’s an airplane nut, wanted “a Huge Airport”. Not just an airport. Nuh-uh. A Huge Airport. This is the story, in pictures (click on picture for full size version), of that huge airport, and how I bootstrapped Christmas:

1. First I went to a website (cannot find the link now) of an airplane enthusiast where I downloaded a set of airport plans in PDF. I printed out each element.

2. Then came the painful task of cutting out each piece - literally (my neck and back ached after hours of doing this). This had to be done with some precision. ---->

3. I laid out all the pieces on the table to make sure it’d all fit together properly
<----

4. Foam board was sourced from the local hobby shop and in a very messy process I glued each piece to the right spot ---->

5. I tried spray lacquer and it was a disaster - by the next morning every piece had lifted from the baord as the lacquer dried and was strong enough at curling the edges to overpower the glue. So after a second gluing session I went with outdoor brush-on varnish. That worked so it was on with the modelers grass.