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Beg, Borrow and Steal Your Way to Resources: Or How One Startup Leveraged the World Cup!

Kuky Useful Startup Tips "Beg, Borrow, Steal" is a fairly common phrase in the startup world.  

This does not mean actually go out and steal money from people or stick up a bank.  This merely refers to the idea of leveraging resources that are around you, without having to kick in the budget for it.

I probably first heard the expression "beg, borrow, steal" while working for a fairly mature SaaS company.  Although the company had many organized structures and departments, there was still a small group of us who met the companies various challenges head-on without much resourcing. I found myself on small intrepreneurial (see Guy Kawasaki) teams who would work on a particular challenge with limited resources, so we were forced to "beg, borrow, steal" from other departments.  If we were short a marketing resource, we'd secretly recruit a close marketing ally to spend some cycles on our project.  Or perhaps leverage a top and forward thinking sales person to help us test out a sales pitch.  Eventually, the borrowed time would necessitate us talking to their superiors, but we'd work under the radar as long as we could.

Sample Items that will be available from Kuky World in Fall 2014.  Stay tuned!

In the startup world, I've found there are often few resources, so you'd have to implement a "beg, borrow, steal" strategy to get your work done.  Mavi Miller, CEO of Kuky World has done just this recently.  In need of design resources, she'd made a series of World Cup bets with a designer friend of hers.  In her own words, "Me and two of my friends basically bet on every (World Cup) game as to who would win.  And since we have different backgrounds and different needs our stakes were whatever our strength is.  I had to do translation and do MBA homework for one of the guys, and I luckily won most of the bets so Kuky's website found its designer.  Haha!" Resourceful!  Go Kuky!