How to start a business
I was recently asked by a friend for advice on “how to start a business”. Here are some of the resources and advice I had for her.
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9 keys:
1. You can start it in your *spare* time, just carve out x hours / day / week to do *damage*.
2. Keep your expenditures down, be creative. Money doesn’t create great companies, hard work and great people do.
3. Pick something you like doing, then it won’t be much of a chore to do.
4. Social media and networking (both online and in-person) take marketing costs down to zero. Again, it’s just a time investment. Network, network, network…
5. Test. Measure. Refine. Rinse, repeat.
6. Never stop learning. Become a student of your business, business in general and of life.
7. Give back, help others.
8. Now is the time to start, now is the time. (here is Seth Godin’s entry on “When to start”)
9. Outsource, automate and eliminate as many annoying non-core to your biz tasks as possible. Put your focus where it should be. If you are a designer, focus on design and the biz of design. If you are an accountant focus on accounting and the biz of accounting.
Outsource automate and eliminate what others can do better and cheaper than you can. E.g., I handle all the essential but bothersome tasks of registering domains / hosting email and developing websites / web hosting (link). These are all tasks that can nickel & dime small biz’ time and energy.
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Resources:
This is a great site with lots ideas and tips from other entrepreneurs. http://mixergy.com/
(here’s a good snippet of the material, I’ll try to think of specific episodes that stood out to me — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQnD0DULo1g )
Watch this — David Heinemeier Hansson at Startup School 08
Neil Patel has a pretty comprehensive list of resources.
The Entrepreneur’s Handbook – 59 Resources For First Time Entrepreneurs
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Web 2.0: Top 25 Applications to Grow Your Business
Y Combinator founder Paul Graham’s seminal essay “How to start a startup“
Mark Cuban’s — A Couple of My Rules for Startups
In Mark’s post there’s a link to Jason Calacanasis’ “How to save money running a startup (17 really good tips)”
Kevin Patrick’s “Ten Commandments of Endurance”, I believe they apply to starting and running a company.
Simon Sinek’s presentation @ TED video: How great leaders inspire action. Start by asking why.
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Reading list:
Outliers: The Story of Success
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Misc:
Create very small goals that are attainable and scale up from there. You will become disillusioned if you decide you’re going to create the next huge company that’s a fusion of Apple, Google, Facebook & Walmart. Those are lightning strikes. Create a nice little neighborhood Italian restaurant as David Heinemeier Hansson of 37 Signals says. Paul Buckheit creator of Gmail & Friendfeed said with Gmail, they tried to get 100 happy users inside Google. It was harder than they thought, then scale up. Again start small…
