Resources

A comprehensive guide to subjects covered in the August issue, including start-up information.

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Resources is the Inc. guide to more information on subjects in this issue. This information is intended to help our readers; Inc. does not profit from the sale of any of the resources listed.

Markets: The End of the World As We Know It

One of the by-products of the year 2000 computer hoopla (known as Y2K by the insiders) is the slew of articles, books, software, and experts that have sprung up to help you and your money part company. If you're looking for one practical, no-nonsense guide to figuring out if you have a problem and then, if you do, getting it fixed, consider Solving the Year 2000 Problem (AP Professional, 800-321-5068, 1997, $27.95) . It's written by Jim Keogh, who spent years solving technology problems for investment-banking firms on Wall Street and also served as an editor at Popular Electronics and Personal Computer magazines. His advice is refreshingly practical and jargon free. Want to do a simple test to see if you have a Y2K problem? Disconnect your personal computer from your local area network, back up all the systems stored on your personal computer, and then follow these pearls of advice from chapter 5, "Solutions, Testing, and Implementation":

• Set your system's clock to 23:55. This is five minutes before midnight.
• Set the date on your system to December 31, 1999.
• Turn off your computer for about five minutes.
• Turn on your computer.
• Check the date on your computer. This should be January 1, 2000.

"All the systems running on your personal computer should react as if the year 2000 bug has struck," Keogh writes. "If your computer system's clock does not show the correct date, then you know that you must upgrade your hardware because all the systems running on the computer will be using an inaccurate date."

Cover Story: Great Companies Started with $10,000 or Less

The literature on how to build a company from $0 or so is as slender as a bootstrapper's bank account. Recently, however, that body of work has been fattened by the paperback Bootstrapper's Success Secrets: 151 Tactics for Building Your Business on a Shoestring Budget, by Kimberly Stansell (Career Press, 800-227-3371, 1997, $13.99). Her survival pointers include surprisingly sound though hardly exhaustive advice on the basics: finance, setting up an office, marketing, rudimentary management, getting help from others, and coping with growth. Best of all, the handbook provides the names and addresses of hundreds of outside resources--a compilation that alone is worth the price. The author also publishes a quarterly newsletter, Bootstrappin' Entrepreneur. For information, send E-mail to Stansell.

Previous Inc. bootstrapping features appeared in September 1990, September 1991, September 1992, November 1993, September 1994, and August 1995. To find the articles on-line, go to our Web site's search engine and type in the keyword bootstrapper.

So you want to know more about famous companies that have been bootstrapped? For starters, get your hands on Hoover's Handbook of American Business (Hoover's Inc., 800-486-8666, $29.95). Used by our reporter to survey the life stories of hundreds of great American companies, this terrific handbook (his copy is now dog-eared and filled with dozens of bookmarks) is indispensable to the budding corporate historian. Among its best features: an overview of current events within each company and industry; a summary of each business's history from the start-up stage forward; and an index of data, which includes contact information for each business. A pricey $449.95 CD-ROM provides information on major U.S. companies and on big businesses located around the globe, interesting private companies, and emerging corporations. The handbook is also available at bookstores or at your local library.

If you want to contact any of the companies on our hall-of-fame roster, expect a variety of responses. It's interesting to see how diligent some companies are when it comes to keeping track of institutional history. Apple Computer, for example, has a comprehensive corporate biography on-line. And while there are many companies (Coca-Cola, for example) that have great corporate archivists, many others are surprisingly disorganized. Roadway Express, for one, has had to hire an outside firm to keep tabs on its genealogy.

Finally, many big-time entrepreneurs have taken the time to write about their bootstrapping days. While the autobiography of Ernest and Julio Gallo, Our Story, is out of print, Bill Gates's book, The Road Ahead (Penguin USA, 800-253-6476, 1995, $15.95 ), is still available. (Perhaps you've heard of it?) Lillian Vernon's book, An Eye for Winners: How I Built America's Greatest Direct Mail Business (HarperBusiness, 800-242-7737, 1996, $23), is a fun, light read.

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