Posts Tagged ‘business plan’

The Startup Visa

March 23rd, 2010

Recently, I’ve been following the development of the Startup Visa in the news. The basis of the Startup Visa is to give green cards to any foreigner who starts up a company in the United States that creates jobs. While there are certainly valid points against some of the technical details about how such a plan is implemented, I’m a big fan of the concept. Now that it has been officially introduced, I’m looking forward to watching it progress and hopefully become reality.

I think we need to find ways to extend the concept of a Startup Visa to benefit all entrepreneurs. Why not create incentives for anyone who has the ideas and willpower to create jobs? Our government needs to focus more energy on creating financial and regulatory benefits for small companies. Here in Arizona, city governments are funding startup seminars and training in hopes of creating new jobs.  Gangplank, a local tech-oriented non-profit, recently announced they were working with Chandler, AZ to expand their workspace in order to attract more businesses and create growth. If only we could allocate more money to similar endeavors I believe we’d see returns many multiples greater than our initial investment.

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Can you keep a secret?

March 6th, 2010

Can you keep a secret? Good, me too.

I recently had a discussion with a group of entrepreneurs about getting more people involved in creating their own businesses and what are some of the barriers to making that happen. An interesting one that came up was the fact that people keep their idea a secret and are afraid to tell anyone about it until they’ve managed to get things going but then never do because they don’t have all the resources they need or build something that no one wants or make costly mistakes that doom them to failure.

So why are people like this? One of the culprits is the first mover advantage doctrine. The first mover advantage for those that aren’t familiar with it refers to the first significant company to move into a market and take advantage of limited resources. It is the early bird gets the worm school of thought. So many people are afraid that if they tell people about the worm they are going to get that that person will beat them to it and their one chance at fortune and fame is thwarted. (Here’s a good post w/some graphs for a counterpoint to that way of thinking- Is First Mover advantage a Myth?)

If the business idea is so fragile that others knowing about it will destroy the barriers to entry start it now-don’t wait. Execution is what separates the successful companies from those that aren’t more so than the quality of the idea.

I think the fear of not being able to execute is what drives a lot of the secrecy and it is just easier to stall until you figure it out. This is where the business plan industry comes in. Now granted plans always change and things don’t necessarily go like you want them to but the rigor associated with putting it together helps you to become familiar with the details. Here are a few websites I found on first glance that can guide you as you try to compose the next great idea. Please let me know of any other good ones you come across. Thanks!

http://www.sequoiacap.com/ideas       

http://www.sba.gov/smallbusinessplanner/plan/writeabusinessplan/index.html

http://www.inc.com/guides/write_biz_plan/20660.html

http://businessplans.org/businessplans.html#winning

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Auditions

December 21st, 2009

I was reading through Paul Graham’s “18 Mistakes that Kill Start-ups” essay and found in note #13 an interesting idea and a possible answer to my previous post’s quandry.

“[13] So how do you know whether you’re in the category of people who should quit their day job, or the presumably larger one who shouldn’t? I got to the point of saying that this was hard to judge for yourself and that you should seek outside advice, before realizing that that’s what we do. We think of ourselves as investors, but viewed from the other direction Y Combinator is a service for advising people whether or not to quit their day job. We could be mistaken, and no doubt often are, but we do at least bet money on our conclusions.”

For those that aren’t familiar with Y Combinator, it is a group that invests early in start-ups and puts them through a kind of boot camp to get them up to speed. Angel and early stage investors can offer an kind of audition of sorts for those of us trying to decide whether to do it full time or not.

 So write up a business plan and submit it to your nearest business plan competition-see if it goes anywhere. If it doesn’t get selected to win it all it doesn’t mean it is a bad idea and you won’t be successful but it can provide you with opposing pespectives that test your level of determination. Maybe even put a chip on your shoulder to prove some folks wrong.

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