In this startup age of internet most of you have got is an idea, a little or no bootstrap cash, and twinkling eyes. Now now the question arises, should you take some kind of course or crash course? Find someone who knows what they’re doing and how to but has nothing to do, so that they can tell you what to do and what not to? or whatever else.
Being an entrepreneur is neither easy nor difficult, although a startup might take some-or-long time to go successful. So how much time? It may take a month, a year or whole life. Yes, but having a business background is not necessary.
A surprising percentage of successful entrepreneurs did not have prior formal business experience and this is more of an advantage than limitation. The reason is old way of doing business is very much different from new ways, new ways are disrupting the old ways. Perhaps there is an argument that formal business experience is an obstruction. Probably not, if you are not loaded with static; undeveloping ideas & education. You should be innovative, people having a business background fail when they lack innovation and never change themselves to adopt new ways of doing things.
Entrepreneurship is largely about being innovative, unparalleled creative and fearless which are not the principle traits cared about in formal business training.
So background in business might be something nice sometimes but certainly not a must have recommendation for a startup entrepreneur. Most of the entrepreneurs that receive funding now-a-days have no background in business so the things that they prove to be vital are: idea with dreams, belief with passion and will power to action these.
There are few things about business and entrepreneurship which we will discuss in this lesson. Mr. Conor Neill, Founder of 4 companies and someone who teaches Masters of Business Administration says —
Here is everything you need to know about business & entrepreneurship:
Being a business man:
- Revenues minus Costs equals Profit.
- If an initiative does not affect revenues or costs then it is not a business initiative.
- If costs remain higher than revenues for an extended period, you have what is known as a charity.
- If you don’t understand somebody it is probably because they don’t understand it either. Do not be fooled by big titles or expensive suits.
And on being an entrepreneur:
- Read about lean startup. Do it backwards. Find customer first, build big gizmo only when a paying customer says they want it. Remain humble. Be scared when you think you “know” something.
- Do what you feel is right rather than what you feel “they” say you “should” do.
- Get mentors. Listen. Ask far more questions than ever before.
- Do it because of the day to day of the adventure. If you get rich, that is a bonus – but you will spend most of your life in the journey.
There are some services such as bdc.ca that enables you to know how entrepreneurial type you are. We don’t know how good they are in their work but they are somewhat popular on world wide web. Another website called estrengths.com provides entrepreneurial strengths assessment.
Mr. Ramanathan Sriram, Entrepreneur, Mentor, Consultant says – Entrepreneurs would also need to answer the following 13 questions:
- Why do we exist? (purpose)
- What is our aspiration (vision)
- Exactly what problem will this solve? (value proposition)
- For whom do we solve that problem? (target segment)
- Do we have the capabilities for this? (complementary team)
- How big is the opportunity? (market size)
- What alternatives are out there? (competitive landscape)
- Why are we best suited to pursue this? (our differentiator)
- Why now? (market window)
- How will we get this solution to market? (go-to-market strategy)
- How will we measure success? (metrics/revenue strategy)
- What factors are critical to success? (solution requirements)
- Can we succeed – is this viable and sustainable? (go or no-go)
You should also make a team of right people (for you) to overcome bad ideas. But first make an understanding with the actual work the team will do and then optimize the personnel around the key activities.
Also try to be a good story teller for your team members. Likewise good storytellers can describe problems and their solutions in a way that glamours attention and encourages everyone to act in a certain way encouraging collaboration between members at the same time.
You can also make use of services like TiE with 57 chapters across 14 countries a platform where you can find mentors, investors, partners and also learn the basics of starting and scaling your business.
To learn more from entrepreneurs you can make use of Mr. Bradley Will’s article about top 20 LinkedIn groups all entrepreneurs must join. Other establishing networks include: Meetup where neighbors get together to learn something, do something, share something, Startup Grind which educates, inspires and connects entrepreneurs, Hacker News and Facebook, Twitter & other social media groups can be searched by typing keywords.
You should be working on your idea but not waste all time in reaching perfection as it never comes. One common misconception people are loaded with is the product must be perfect before they present or publicize it, there is nothing like a perfect product so don’t wait for it to come. Instead build a minimum viable product or the easiest and budget version of your idea live, so that you can test it out and learn something new to continue with your next step.
Starting a company is not always easy but if you have a great disrupting idea then you must bring it to life and turn your dream into a reality.
In this age of internet it is far more important to understand how to make use of technology than to learn the old business tactics. So if you have a great idea then your first step should bring it to life by making a website & app for it.
SANGKRIT.net has made this simplest to startup and even simpler to windup in the clouds at http://system.sangkrit.net basis monthly/annual payment options covering everything involved to come online. You can simply start a website with one click website installer, webhosting that supports all popular application frameworks, website builder or use Managed WordPress.
Online support is sold at US$ 15 hourly via email to system@sangkrit.net which can be used as a helping hand to get all technical things done on your website and app. Thus doing business through the smartphone era of internet age is defined as per your ease of doing it.
Seeing all that you may feel free to disrupt any ongoing ways of doing things to startup online and we are always here to support you.