Guest Post by Andreea Chiriloiu. Passionate about the social media environment and has discovered in herself a pathologic tendency to love smartphones. Her time is devoted to mobile web apps. She is the Social Media Manager@ Webcrumbz.net
The question regarding whether an entrepreneur is born or made goes back since the beginning of time and is quite the same as the chicken and egg discussion: everybody has a valid point of view in order to sustain the side of the theory that he believes in, but no one can reach a solid and fully accepted conclusion.
Greg Watson, author of “DNA of an entrepreneur”, has a bunch of enchanting statements that may influence us in our beliefs. He is actually leaning towards the idea that while an individual can be born an entrepreneur, the entrepreneurship skills can in fact be learnt and developed by everyone. Indeed, it needs some fierce guts to achieve a certain standard and occupy the top rank in the market, but with a little cold blood, it does not seem such a hard task to accomplish.
Regardless of one or other’s beliefs over this issue, when it comes to beginning a start-up, there are a set of crucial questions that you need to ask yourself when starting your own business. And these questions don’t do anything more than help you create the proper strategy, the normal work-flow and the right amount of resources to invest in your new company.
Whether it is related to the number of people that work for you, to the beta-version of the product or simply to the investor pitch, these questions will allow you to start on the right path and follow it until you sense the need to do it all over again.
Every entrepreneur, when starting a business highly believes that his product is the best ever made, that he is a genius and that the product can sell itself due to the large amount of awesomeness it possesses. But while no one can argue at the genius part, the other ones are not so true (let’s put it in a good light) because no product, regardless of its features or the development that it has gone through will sell on its own. Ever.
You need a market, you need customers and you need competition (OK, maybe you don’t need it, but it’s usually there and in many cases that’s actually a validation of your business). And this is not all. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here and start with the beginning.
Usually, the Product Development stage has a diagram that helps you visualize what it is all about and I am sure that every one of you knows what I am talking about. It gives you a complete overview of your product and strategies for the future to be marketing and sales departments.
It also helps you further develop your product scheme or investor pitch and with a little bit of help from a figure-oriented person, it can also be transformed into your company’s first financial chart. Am I right? Of course I am not! “Why?” I hear you asking faintly.
Elementary my dear, the answer is right in front of you. This chart appears helpful and harmless, showing you the right steps to take when developing a new product in a well-established existing market, where the basis of competition is understood and the customers and known. But how many startups start in such a manner? Ironically, very few because few of them actually know to which market they address.
3 comments
I completely agree with you!! I would love it if you would post more!! Ipm
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