First time entrepreneurs faced with a good idea, some opportunity, and little else find themselves candidates for bootstrapping. 
In 1989, faced with the opportunity to build a company around one customer and a new idea for CRM, I bootstrapped a company that grew nicely for better than 12 years and is today part of a much larger organization.
Here are some of the keys that I learned along the way:
1. Plan from the bottom up.
Few companies really have the luxury of planning their revenues and then working up their expenses. Too many try to do this. Inevitably this results in expenses that are both too high and fixed (leases signed, employees hired, etc) and hard to adjust when the reality of early revenue doesn't really work.
If the business idea is really a good one, the resulting investment by outsiders in this situation is very expensive money.
Instead, plan your minimum expenses. Figure out ways to outsource as much as you can - on a variable basis. Yes, this is short term more expensive but it will not be a burden early on. As revenues grow predictable you can always trade higher variable for lower fixed costs.
2. Manage the business to make the customer insanely happy.
The best customer is the early adopter, of course. (See Crossing The Chasm.) We kept the customer well informed about our plans and ideas, often offering up ways for them to try new features quickly. We wired together a lot of things to achieve this. (Sometimes it felt like the back room at the the Automat. )
We underpromsied and overdelivered. We "invented" automated results reporting at a time when that was a new idea. We solicited new applications and kept them informed of our thinking and our progress,
Sometimes we took the chance of building what we were sure the customer would want, if only they knew it. (This is great if you have the deep business application knowledge to pull it off.)
And they paid us, every month, 3 days after invoice. Which made the payroll, the rent, and whatever few expenses we had. Which brings me to:
3. Manage the business for cash flow.
We (there were four of us) were pretty good at this. If we got invited to speak at a conference we booked sales calls and meeting opportunities before, during and after.
We outsourced all of the CPU (mainframe "in those days") time and programming on a per job basis.
We rented space in an old factory. (Today, I suppose this is cool loft space!) It had been a shop foreman's area off the factory floor.
Expense growth plans were predicated upon finding more customers. You get the idea.
4. Round up great advisers.
I think what I learned most here was "don't ask, don't get." I called up the Sr. VP of Marketing at Saks Fifth Avenue, Paul Leblang, who joined the board. Next, I went after Len Vickers, senior marketing guru to Jack Welch at GE. Len invented "We Bring Good Things To Life." I had to go see him (on my way to somewhere else) - and he joined. I added Dick Sim of APW, Dave Drury, who had been Managing Director of Price Waterhouse, a local legend in M&A, and now a successful entrepreneur, and a scientist in database research, Jeff Naughton of UW.
The deal was that the company's leadership team would create an agenda and provide background info in advance. They'd come prepared to talk and we listened. (or tried to.) Next time we'd report back on what we'd done.
5. Sell Services.
We wanted to be a software company. However, by selling service to our growing customer base we could generate current revenue. We also priced our software on the "monthly rental" model for the same reason.
Bootstrapping is probably the best way to build yourself into a company positioned to grow. Your positive results and customer successes make you much more interesting to investors. Here's a great case example of Steve Belkin who bootstrapped his first travel company.
Let me know your thoughts.