The $5,000 Startup Club: How to Fund Your Startup with General Assembly
Can you actually launch a startup for less than $5,000?
Atto and General Assembly are on a similar mission.
We want to empower people through education to do work they love.
We wanted to share insider stories from female founders who have launched startups quickly and earned revenue early.
The $5,000 Startup Club deep-dived into how founders get started and their funding options.
At Atto, we encourage female founders to build scalable, sustainable and independent tech enabled businesses. And money is a key factor in starting and sustaining a business. Getting revenue, funding, and support early is important.
Atto has shared many resources to educate, support and empower founders to take small steps towards their business goals. We advocate for the ‘indie way’ of building a startup so that founders validate with customers, test quickly, and use no-code tools where possible to save on costs.
We’ve written about the cost of starting a startup which includes costs like:
Incorporation
Office Expenses & Equipment
Software & Cloud Services
Events & Education
Freelancers & Consultants (incl. Developers)
To share their real founder stories, we put a spotlight on Atto alum Leanne Bats, Co-Founder of Cool Gram (Atto 2021) and Pamela Yip, Co-Founder of Bubble Tea Club (Atto 2020) to speak about the realities of launching and funding startups. Atto’s founder Kate Kendall also joined the panel sharing insights after launching multiple businesses (The Fetch, Cloudpeeps, and Atto) and using multiple funding avenues including traditional investor capital, crowdfunding, and grant funding.
So what's a good budget to get started with?
Many female founders come to us with a great idea but aren’t sure about how to get started or what the costs of getting started are.
Sharing their starting steps, first budgets and funding models, this event explores the idea if you can launch a startup for $5,000.
There’s lots of debate around the different funding models for startups, and how to get started. We’ve also written about the pros and cons of different startup funding models, including:
Bootstrapping & Self Funding
Loans and Credit
Grant Funding
Crowdfunding & Equity Crowdfunding
Angel Investment
Venture Capital
Watch Atto x General Assembly $5,000 Startup Club
Event Description
Launching a startup is more affordable than ever before due to the rise in cloud platforms, no-code tools, and lean prototyping. But how affordable is affordable? Can you launch a startup for under $5000? And once launched, what’s the best way to fund your startup? VC, bootstrapping, equity crowdfunding, grants – or even NFTs? We also know that a tiny percentage of traditional funding goes to women, so how can female founders take control and make things happen their own way?
Join General Assembly and Atto, a startup school and micro fund for women founders, in this deep dive into startup funding pathways and early-stage startup costs.
During this event, Atto alumni and Atto’s founder will share how they started small, rapidly tested, and earned revenue in the first few months of operation by focusing on what’s important. Atto encourages founders to use no-code tools to build lean MVPs and test their ideas – before hiring expensive agencies or looking for a technical co-founder.
Our panelists will share key insights into launching startups, valuable resources, budgeting tips, and the various funding pathways you can take in the early stages. You can expect to leave the event with an understanding of how to fund the launch of your startup leanly and what traditional and alternative options are available once launched.
$5,000 Startup Event Takeaways
Gain access to the best startup resources
Our best budgeting tips for the first 6 months
Learn the common mistakes and pitfalls you should look out for
Discover alternative funding pathways
The $5,000 Startup Club Panellists
Leanne Bats - Co-Founder, Cool Points Club
Leanne Bats is the Co-Founder of Cool Points Club who are in the business of reimagining climate action, including using NFT's to create real world carbon removal. She’s currently advising New Zealand Rugby (the All Blacks) on their approach and strategy to Web3, which includes the use of blockchain technology to increase fan engagement. She is an Atto Accelerator graduate and has worked in startups for just shy of a decade.
Pamela Yip - Co-Founder, Bubble Tea Club
Pam has spent the last decade immersed in marketing & building online communities with experience in agency, corporate & start up environments. She’s founded Bubble Tea Club (Australia's 1st & leading DIY Bubble Tea Kits) and VSNRY Digital where she brings other founder's visions to life.
Her passion for marketing, community & brand universes has been recognised by Meta APAC’s Vice President (Dan Neary), A Current Affair, Insider Retailer, Business Insider, The Australian, Herald Sun & more.
Kate Kendall - Founder, Atto VC
Kate Kendall is a British-Australian entrepreneur, community builder, coach, and advisor. As a startup industry veteran, she’s founded multiple companies including most recently, Atto: a trusted startup school, virtual accelerator program and microfund for female founders. Kate is the founder director of Indie Labs (a startup advisory studio and product firm). She also founded CloudPeeps, The Fetch and IndieConf.
Kate is a pioneer of the ‘indie way’ for startup building and regularly champions alt-funding pathways, having bootstrapped businesses as well as successfully raising traditional investor capital, crowdfunding, and grant funding.
Kate holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Business (Marketing) degrees. She started out as a business journalist and now regularly advises companies on the role of community, low-code tech entrepreneurship, and global startup operations. Her work has been featured in Quartz, BuzzFeed, The Next Web, The Australian, the ABC, Marie Claire, Lifehacker and more.
Over the past decade, she’s lived and worked in Melbourne, New York, San Francisco, Berlin, and Brisbane. She is currently based in regional Victoria, Australia with her husband, two daughters, and two cats. Their next chapter includes moving to a farm in the Macedon Ranges.
Are you a female founder?
Want support to scale your product to the next level?
Submit your application for the Atto Accelerator 2022.