The exact steps a freelancer turned entrepreneur took to build up a 6-figure salary and self-fund her own startup

• Female-founded startups receive less than 3% of total venture capitalist investments, according to a 2019 report.
• Vivian Chen leveraged her $300,000-a-year freelancing income to self-fund her own startup, a freelancing platform for women called Rise.
• The most popular method of small business financing isn't from investors, venture capital, bank loans, or family, but through personal funds.
• If you're looking to bootstrap your own business, she recommended transitioning slowly from freelancing to entrepreneurship, not being afraid to launch before you're ready, and saving money where you can.
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Vivian Chen likes to joke that her startup, Rise - a freelancing platform for women - is "VC funded," as in funded by Vivian Chen, not venture capitalists.

"All jokes aside," she explained to Business Insider - it's worth noting that female startup founders receive less than 3% of total venture funding, according to a 2019 Pitchbook and the National Venture Capital Association report - "until a few months ago, I still freelanced on the side to support my business."

Her startup's origin story is similar to many others - the result of a happy accident. Having worked in corporate marketing for L'Oreal for several years, she initially set out to start a skincare company. After finding out how costly it was going to be to launch, however, she picked up freelance marketing consulting for clients across a variety of industries, from diamond brands to DTC cosmetic companies to billion-dollar fintech unicorns, as a way to fund that initial business.

Soon, her roster of clients grew and she found herself barely able to keep up. Eventually, she was earning $300,000 a year as a freelancer.

At the same time, she had many female friends asking her how they could make the transition to freelancing and if she had any work for them.

"The 'aha' moment came when a Fortune 100 company approached me and offered me a position that was five levels above where I had been just a year prior," said Chen. "I realized that I had 'hacked' my career and discovered a way to go up the ladder faster by getting out of the traditional full-time structure."

That realization inspired her to start Rise that very weekend. She hasn't looked back since.

While there are other freelancing platforms to choose from, Chen saw a need for one with a different purpose: one that would position freelancing "as a way for women to leapfrog one's career," she explained.

Whereas other gig economy platforms, like Fivver, formed to help employers find low-cost labor, Chen's goal with Rise has been to focus on creating a community of 10,000 high-skilled, high-performing, US-based freelancers, who, on average among the current membership, have seven years of experience or more.

Another differentiator for the Rise model is that Chen and her nine-member team of independent consultants (including sales, community, marketing, design, content, and PR) want to connect freelancers to benefits and support services not often available to independent contractors, such as health insurance. In 2019, Rise announced a partnership with health-insurance administrator Decent to offer options for self-employed workers in Austin.

For the first year and a half, the company had been completely bootstrapped by Chen, which is the most common way small businesses are financed - through personal funds, not by angel investors, VCs, banks, or family. After covering her own personal basic living expenses, Chen invested about $100,000 of what she earned from her consulting work in 2019 into her company.

For 2020, the founder is exploring securing outside funding to accelerate Rise's business growth. Here's how she successfully self-funded her business and got it where it is today.

Transition gradually and save money where you can

Chen's shift from freelancer to entrepreneur was gradual - no unrealistic instant success story here. In the beginning, she worked three days a week doing outside freelancing consulting work and another three to four days a week on building Rise.

Since she taught herself to code - via courses on Udemy (for about $10 each) and Coursera, classes in person at General Assembly, searching for answers on Stack Overflow, and through the help of engineering friends - she was able to build the Rise platform, in addition to all of the initial sales, acquisition, marketing, and content without hiring any technical or specialized hires, which kept costs low.

Another way she has kept expenses to a minimum is by not having a physical office (relying instead on The Wing, a coworking space for women, and booking conference space through the Breather platform as needed) or full-time employees or spending money on paid customer acquisition strategies.

Don't wait until it's perfect to launch

When a company posted a job to a listserv Chen was a member of, she decided to reach out and ask if she and Rise could help. Within two days, she secured her very first client, an entrepreneur who has since come back to work with Rise on additional projects.

"Getting that first customer required getting over a major fear because I didn't feel like Rise was ready," said Chen. "I had to really push myself to just put myself out there and see what the product response would be."

As a founder, she has had to remind herself to focus on progress over perfection. That's her advice for other aspiring entrepreneurs as well: Learn quickly and iterate, and don't spend a significant amount of time and effort launching a product that potentially nobody may want. More than ideas, she said, it takes courage to put creativity into action.

"Don't wait for perfection, don't wait until you are 'ready,' because by then you are already too late," she said.

Freelance as a way to springboard your business

As a freelancer, Chen found herself faced with imposter syndrome - overcome by feelings of uncertainty about her own performance - but each time she successfully completed a project, she realized, "I am valuable, smart, diligent, and have immense capacity for problem-solving in various fields," she said.

She's experienced that same cycle as a founder as well. Many aspects of her new role as founder - building a tech product, hiring team members, managing resources and business expenses, and making critical product decisions - have been new to her. Still, overcoming challenges like these has been familiar.

After all, since freelancers are business owners, this isn't her first time launching a business.

For those considering starting a new venture, she sees freelancing as a path, since it provides the flexibility to set your own hours, location, and field to work in. This can provide a great opportunity to explore and take risks you might not otherwise consider in a full-time capacity, said Chen, which can "allow you to get out of your comfort zone, to expand your network, and to ultimately leverage different ways of thinking."