The Truth About Starting a New Business Successfully

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Okay, it’s that time of year again where lists of how to close out the year right, get a jump on the next year, and how to lever­age the hol­i­day social scene pop-up like… well they are every­where. So much so that it forces your brain to tune out and every­thing starts to sound like the teacher from Char­lie Brown fame.

So it shocked me when this one 2012 list flipped my brain switch back to on. And, all it took was the con­cept of put a busi­ness idea into action in under 54-hours. For me it really wasn’t the spe­cific busi­ness ideas, you can check them out here, but the mind­set of the founders of Startup Week­end, Marc Nager, Clint Nelsen and Franck Nouyri­gat. Nager summed it up best by stat­ing that “Fil­ing an LLC, pitch­ing to an investor, and cre­at­ing a 20-page busi­ness plan is absolutely the wrong way to go about launch­ing a startup. The first steps arefind­ing a team and val­i­dat­ing your idea. With­out these two things, you just have dreamers.”

If you are a reg­u­lar, our have seen some of my posts over the last few years, you will real­ize that my think­ing around the best way to start a new busi­ness has dra­mat­i­cally evolved. Being a MBA, Busi­ness Pro­fes­sor, and recov­er­ing Engi­neer it should be no sur­prise that I was very much in the camp of fol­low­ing a method­i­cal business-planning reg­i­men. Spend the time research­ing the issue, defin­ing your assump­tions, and deter­min­ing how to best fund the venture.

The fact of the mat­ter is that this is still a great process if (and that’s a big if) the con­cern has a sig­nif­i­cant track record or is a ‘busi­ness for­mat fran­chise’. Ven­tures of this ilk are mar­ket tested. There is an abun­dance of his­tor­i­cal infor­ma­tion that can be directly applied to the busi­ness fore­cast­ing process of a new entity. If you’re eye­ing a ven­ture that doesn’t fall into one of these two cat­e­gories I believe that there is a bet­ter path for you. But first we need a definition.

Entre­pre­neur­ship -
The man­age­ment sci­ence and art of craft­ing an entity designed to cre­ate a new prod­uct or ser­vice under con­di­tions of extreme uncer­tainty.(1)
If your con­cept doesn’t fall into the above men­tioned frame­works con­grat­u­la­tions you’re an entre­pre­neur. And for you the bet­ter path is a resul­tant of what many are call­ing the ‘Lean Startup’ move­ment. Like all move­ments it’s not one defin­i­tive piece of work but the com­bi­na­tion of many shared expe­ri­ences and insights. In addi­tion to my work with nascent busi­nesses, the three books that have most influ­enced my think­ing in this area have been Busi­ness Model Gen­er­a­tion, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, and Lean Startup. If you would like to learn more about my cur­rent views on how to nav­i­gate an entre­pre­neur­ial path I just fin­ished a series titled 5 Keys to Start­ing A Suc­cess­ful Ven­ture for my insti­tu­tions blog.

P.S. I know some of you may dis­agree with me; I’d love to get your feedback.

(1) Based on the expla­na­tion of an entre­pre­neur devel­oped by Eric Ries in “The Lean Startup
  • Febonio10

    Bravo Donald!  The truth about putting a busi­ness idea into action is great.  It is the  21st Cen­tury after all right?   I agree, Find­ing the Right Team is cru­cial to share and val­i­date your busi­ness idea with.  This is the best resource on the Inter­net I found is called the Fund­in­groadmap.  This cloud-based busi­ness plan and due dili­gence report­ing sys­tem leads you through a process that pro­duces results you can share quickly if needed, specif­i­cally when investors or fund­ing of any kind is involved.  It walks you through the entire process of cre­at­ing a liv­ing, ever-changing Busi­ness Plan in a direct, no-nonsense for­mat. If a com­pany or entrepreneur’s idea is ever going to get off the ground, I highly rec­om­mend explor­ing the Fundingroadmap’s rein­ven­tion of the busi­ness plan.  There is a 7 day free trial with full func­tion­al­ity: http://zfer.us/N3Jwb — Talk about Lean Startup! 

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