This video discusses the initial steps after having a business idea, emphasizing research, understanding past failures, and the personal sacrifices and long-term commitment required from founders.
What this video covers
So one of the first steps that you want to do is do some research. When it comes to the research, you want to go on platforms like Google.
You also want to take a look at who maybe has done it in the past; maybe people that have failed – why did they fail? What was the reason? There are other websites like CrunchBase where you can actually go by segment and take a look at who is specifically tackling that.
The next part is, what are you willing to sacrifice? Let’s face it. If this is something that you’re going to go at it, you’re going to have to sacrifice at least five to ten years of your life, and that’s something that you need to be willing to commit. You need to be passionate enough to really tackle this idea, and that’s going to include missing birthdays, perhaps not being able to be with your friends as much as you wanted. But, again, you really need to understand that this is going to be a marathon that you’re going to be embarking on, and you need to be willing to take the risk and to go all out to make it happen.
The next thing that you want to ask yourself is how big could this be? Let’s face it, the last thing that you want is to get into an idea, go all in, and then all of a sudden, the market is super small. If the market is small, not only is it going to determine the potential outcome of you in the event like this company gets acquired in the future but then also it is going to determine their potential attractiveness toward investors.
The next part is how much money will you need? Let’s take a look at it. Basically, it’s all about developing a minimum viable product. It doesn’t need to be beautiful. It doesn’t need to be perfect; it needs to work, period. It needs to work. You need to put it in front of other people. You need to get people’s reactions.
The next thing that you’re going to need to ask yourself is, who are you going to need for this? Essentially, it’s all about execution. The ideas are just 5%; 95% is the execution, and it’s all about surrounding yourself by the right people. Essentially, what you want to know is, what am I going to need, let’s say for the next 18 to 24 months on the execution roadmap? And essentially, what are the profiles of people that you need to be surrounded by in order to achieve those different milestones that you’re going to have on that roadmap.
The next part is, you want to talk to customers. You want to be able to get as much data as possible, and you can do that on a qualitative basis or a quantitative basis. Qualitative basis is, you want to go knock door-to-door. You want to make as many phone calls as needed. Send as many emails as you can to people that you think could be potential customers of this and just get their feedback. Maybe there’s a set of questions, like five to ten questions that you develop, and you get to see certain patterns when they are replying to those questions, and that’s going to guide you a little bit more on the execution on being able to bring that idea to market.
The next thing that you want to do is you want to claim the name. Let’s face it. Finding a domain, a website that is available is going to be almost impossible. You can go into Go Daddy, you can go to Go Daddy Auctions, and there are even websites like, for example, Who.is where you can type in the URL, and it’s going to tell you who owns that domain. Maybe it makes sense to write an email directly to that individual and see if they’re willing to sell the domain.
The next part is, you want to create a pitch deck. Let’s say 15 to 25 slides where you’re capturing the essence of the story and putting it out there, not only for your own guidance but to present to others that you want to enroll.
That could be investors, potential customers, or potential talent that you want to surround yourself by. A pitch deck is a great way to go.
