Toronto Entrepreneur

Don’t get boggled down with the details, they consume your time and don’t give you anything in return. Once you find your idea, stop yourself from going into too many details. Don’t try to define every single feature that comes to your head. You know all those moments you say “wouldn’t it be cool if…..”, the answer is NO, it wouldn’t. The more features you try to include, the more you have to argue over these features with your partners.

Keep the idea simple, and try to sketch the MAIN pages on paper. Again don’t go into the details when you sketch. Don’t sketch every single page/tab/button or option. This helps you stay focused and keep your eye on the ball. The more detailed you get, the more problems you have to deal with.

Once the sketch is done, try to research the market. The sketch is supposed to remind you what your business is all about and to help you stay focused when you research the market. If your business idea has to do with assisting travelers and somewhere in between your research you find a very nice gallery on pictures from Italy, don’t start watching those pictures. That’s not research that’s what we call “going to the sand box” (a Persian expression for people who get sidetracked).

Good research prevents later surprises and gives you plenty of guidelines. Research has many advantages. It tells you about your competitors, it shows you some of the obstacles your business has to deal with later on. It shows you some solutions that your competition has chosen to overcome those obstacles and of course it gives you a great idea on the scope of your problem. Don’t underestimate the time research takes. It took us a good two months to get a descent idea about our market. Build tangible stuff.

If after your research, you know you still want to go on with your initial idea, then you need to get to work. You have spent a good 5-6 months by now and not only you’re not making any revenue, you don’t even have a product. So now you have to decide whether you need some angel investment down the road or not. You have to know if the 2, 3 or however many founders there are, are able to overcome all the obstacles the business foresees in the future or not. Does your business require sales people. Does it need more than just 2,3 developers to speed things up. Does your business depend on other businesses? If you don’t think you don’t REALLY need investment, then delve into building your product and your business model. If you only have a strong technical background, be ready to learn about marketing, sales, pricing, positioning, branding and all those fun sides of business. I mean it, they are really fun but you need to spend time on it to learn it. If you need angel investors, then you need a demo.

Demos are great, since they are visual. Your demo should only cover the core of your business, no bells and whistles whatsoever. Investors need to understand the core of your business and the more you add, the less they understand. You can put together either a flash demo or a plain html/css/javascript demo. Whichever you think is easier for you and more powerful to the investor. Don’t spend too much time on the details of the demo. It will consume your time without you noticing it. Design is a hell of a time consumer.

I will talk more about angel investors, the first version of your product, learning more about the business side of things and putting together a business plan later.

Yours truly,

Rokham Fard

Tags: angel investor, branding, business plan, demo, detail, entrepreneur, marketing, positioning, pricing, research, sales, startup, toronto

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 23rd, 2008 at 9:56 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.