OT: Entrepreneur advice in time of COVID
Not looking for anything specific. Just general words of wisdom. Would love to connect privately if anyone is interested...
First words: take the risk. You cant business plan courage; be a doer. The market has reset. Now is the time.
If you are willing to work, you will make it.
I’ll second the courage part. Making the business plan can be a grind and will give you the road map, but pulling the trigger might be the hardest part.
Also willing to have a chat if you want.
I've done a few entrepreneurial ventures in the past. I'd be happy to listen and help if I can.
April 24th, 2020 at 10:04 PM ^
I don't mean this in a bad / threatening way: Prepare for the adventure to be all-consuming. That might be necessary at times. It probably will not map to a 40-60 hour week (well, unless your idea and execution are otherworldly).
Also, if you've not done so already, find a "So, you want to be an entrepreneur?" checklist. See how many boxes you can check.
Best wishes.
You need a physical location?
Make a detailed business plan. There’s a bunch of templates on the internet and Word to get you started.
Also be honest with yourself about what the competition is or why no one is doing your idea yet.
If you are a Michigan alum, I'd be happy to talk to you for a bit if you want.
In my career, I've co-founded six companies, two went public, one acquired, one not successful, one too early to tell, one early but not progressing much. They were in the fields of finance, biotech, and IT.
Tell me an e-mail address for you (can be a junk one, of course), and I'll e-mail you my contact info, or tell me some other way to contact you if you want.
I’m curious which biotech, or technology if you are willing to divulge it here.
April 24th, 2020 at 10:57 PM ^
The biotech that went public was CombiMatrix Corp. It went public in mid 2000's and was acquired by Invitae in 2017. In 2010, the DNA-array technology part of CombiMatrix separated out to form CustomArray, Inc., which was acquired by GenScript, a multinational biotech company, in 2018.
April 24th, 2020 at 10:33 PM ^
No alum, no deal!
April 24th, 2020 at 10:58 PM ^
Absolutely. :)
I'll go out of my way to make time to talk to my fellow Michigan and Caltech alums.
Keep it strictly secret until you are ready to launch. Need to know basis under trade secret agreement. Organize as a corporation asap. If you or your spouse holds appreciable assets never, ever sign a personal guarantee. Don't sacrifice time with your children for a hypothetical goldmine. Accept you probably will not get rich but what the heck try anyway. Good luck. - musings of a patent lawyer 20+ years in-sport
April 24th, 2020 at 10:10 PM ^
Not to thread-jack,but personally I've got a board game idea I want to test out. I feel like I need to get the game out there to a few people I know to see if they like the game, whether they like the rules, whether the rules actually make sense, if there's any loopholes in the rules that I need to cover, etc. What advice would you recommend for me to get the idea out there? Do you know how copyright rules work with board/card games?
April 24th, 2020 at 10:44 PM ^
I'll play your game, you rogue
April 24th, 2020 at 11:27 PM ^
Is it a Jump to Conclusions mat by chance?
Can I talk to you for advice. I am worried about my IP vs. current company
I’m not an entrepreneur but if you need a physical location outside the home to do business or you need customers to come to you, I’d tell you to sleep on it (for now). But I’m guessing you thought of that well before I did.
If you have the time, the capital, the business plan, and perhaps most importantly, the courage to pull the trigger, then go for it.
April 24th, 2020 at 10:06 PM ^
Get a business entity set up. A lawyer who specializes in this can help and it’s not as expensive as you’d might think.
Started a business 20 years ago. Couldn’t fathom ever going back to work for someone else.
April 24th, 2020 at 10:06 PM ^
Tell us what it is and we'll go from there.
Do not tell us what it is. Especially at this extremely early phase of conceptualization.
April 24th, 2020 at 10:11 PM ^
Shark Tank
/s
In all seriousness, good luck with your plan! Report back once you're off and running so we can throw our dollars at you.
April 24th, 2020 at 10:26 PM ^
Well I’ll bite. I was going to get an MBA a few years after graduating with a UM engineering degree, but I launched a side project at the time on Kickstarter that ended up being successful enough to become full time and more, and have now been running and growing this business, 7 years and counting.
Cliche but true:
- You are almost certain to fail
- Ideas are worth nothing, execution is everything
- If you are remotely successful, someone will steal your shit, because they can. (Original ideas/products are rare).
If those all get you more motivated, that’s probably a good sign.
—-
As for who to work with and where to get advice:
- The most successful business people I’ve met, they don’t read “business” books and they don’t ask how to do something. Instead they go out and figure it out themselves. After failing a few times, they begrudgingly ask peers if better way to do it. Being a “Wantraprenuer” is a real trap.
- Learning how to “business” is like learning a language, you have to practice (and fail) to begin to get a sense of what you are doing. Just like you can’t learn Spanish by reading books or watching videos, you have to go out and practice it.
As for how to get started, there are some good podcasts and occasionally good blog posts where entrepreneurs talk shop. But realize most of these are just business people selling some new service, it’s hard to find signal from noise. I thought “Tropical MBA” podcast was generally very high signal to noise. A lot of newer entrepreneurs claim reading “4-hour work week” was inspirational (not to mean it actually provided good advice, just that it got them excited about the possibilities).
As for actually creating a viable business, your idea is worthless until the first moment someone pays you something for it. The general advice here is to build your “minimum viable product” as quickly as possible and actually try to sell it. Anything besides this is typically a waste of time (including, but not limited to: writing a business plan, talking to bankers, going to business meetups, reading business books, developing a marketing plan, planning for any type of large scale production, getting patents, getting licensing)
April 24th, 2020 at 10:42 PM ^
Scientist advice -
Live it up now because we’re all gonna die or be thrown back to the Stone Age.
-drjaws
April 24th, 2020 at 10:46 PM ^
Hey, I’m a PhD toxicologist. Someone tell me how to be a stock market analyst real quick. Got some great stock ideas.
/just fuckin with ya bud I’m drunk
April 24th, 2020 at 10:54 PM ^
Just out all your capital into USO
April 24th, 2020 at 11:08 PM ^
Everyone on this board was CDC Director at some point. You're a little out of your depth.
April 24th, 2020 at 10:54 PM ^
Only piece of advice I would give is don't use the word entrepreneur. Ranks right up there with TV evangelist, used car salesman and politicians as least trustworthy professions.
I understand it's just a word, but when I hear that term I think the tonic salesman in old westerns.
April 24th, 2020 at 11:15 PM ^
I agree with this 100%. Even worse is the always self-touted "serial entrepreneur". You are whatever you do. The word entrepreneur is such self-aggrandizing garbage and I hardly ever take somebody seriously that describes themselves as such.
To the OP - try to find a connection to a cpa and a lawyer that don't take business startups as clients. You want to find professional service firms that are successful in their own right and the firms that take anybody off the street aren't running their firms well enough to give you good advice. I say this as a CPA of 20 years who is successful in his own right and doesn't work with startups unless they are referred by people I trust and respect.
April 24th, 2020 at 11:21 PM ^
Better than an “influencer.”
April 25th, 2020 at 10:53 AM ^
Yeah, you got that right!
April 24th, 2020 at 11:40 PM ^
Fill me in on the idea and I will let you know what I think.
April 25th, 2020 at 12:10 AM ^
set up a corporation or better yet, an LLC. make a wise decision about ownership (who owns what, and what happens if it goes bad) and whatever financing you might need - remember, debt is a curse.
lets talk about production, if its a product. who/what/when/where/cost/timing/licensing
intellectual property rights are a big deal. lets talk about how novel your tech/idea is and probably move to protect it
lets talk about who you see your market as being, and how are we going to access that market. is it people or connections you already have? is it companies that you need to cold call? is it more of a 'internet marketing' application? maybe its some of all of the above.
if its a service, who besides you can provide it? is your wife involved? what are the limits of how you can cast that in terms of time - there are only so many hours in the day and you've got your medical gig to keep going.
and you'll need some type of website so folks can find you. that's an easy one, but don't forget it.
you are welcome to get hold of me if you think i can help. i am happy to help you sketch this out if that is something that would be of service to you.
no matter what, good luck.
I started a business in 2009. Tough timing, but we've grown every year since and we're still going strong. Trust yourself and run hard with it. If you don't, you'll wish you had. If you do, you may end up wishing you hadn't but at least you won't wonder. Business structure, CPA....that's all easy stuff...it will come. Focus on your idea and how you're going to make it pay. Nothing is more important than your idea and how you'll make it pay.
So TBR - when you phrase the title that way - does that mean you have something specific in mind to what we will be going through for the next.... few years? I certainly think commerce will change drastically and maybe permanently but we will adapt and I think whatever "back to normal" means will take years if it ever happens to get to where life was 3 months ago.
I have a small business and this is our 23rd year. Before that I was in the field for 8 years. I'm a contractor and have a partner with me 51%, president and license holder. We are a California Corporation and decided not to go Delaware for whatever reason I can't even remember. If there would ever be any liability, i.e. employees, I would recommend incorporating.
We've managed to stay in biz, though it's been a bit of a rollercoaster. None of the other companies in town when we started are still around (others have sprouted up). Some of the bigger companies ended up subbing us to do their high profile jobs for years. They just all got too big and spent to much and went bankrupt. We are streamlined. KEEP YOUR OVERHEAD LOW. I don't know that we ever bought anything in 22 years that couldn't be paid for in cash unless it was truck that could be paid off in 6 months.
Edit: to add that working for yourself would be hard to trade for.
I’m a healthcare entrepreneur as we speak in these trying times. I work around a lot of other healthcare start-ups so I can somewhat see what’s happening in this space which is obviously impacted by COVID. While many/most industries are impacted, I believe that healthcare will be impacted the most, with several permanent changes on the horizon.
Winners
1. Telehealth
2. Infection prevention
3. Human footprint reduction. Solutions that require less people to be in the hospital
4. Dx/Pharma companies that focus on viruses
5. Device companies that focus on replenishing and effectively maintaining our National Stockpile in preparation for the next pandemic (if it happens).
Losers
1. AI/Machine learning (although I don’t think this will be permanent; it will come back in medium term)
2. Large capital equipment OEMs (non-ventitors)
3. Me too products
4. Companies that focus on elective surgeries (again, I don’t think this will be permanent)
Very strange post. Hope it’s just a bad joke. Anybody actually call?
Have a nice day, Bro! Yeah, there are several steps to start. At first, you should understand y our idea and why people will need it, then you should think about the business plan. Then you should think about some services that will help you in work like https://voiptimecloud.com/call-center/outbound-call-center-software . It is rather useful, check it.
November 17th, 2020 at 11:40 AM ^
Good afternoon! I have just started my first offline business. This is a franchise from a famous grill bar. I like the idea of that business. If you are interested in it - I would recommend you to read about their franchise opportunities. The advantage of this is that you open a restaurant which is already known. I was surprised by how many people came during the opening day!
January 22nd, 2021 at 8:08 PM ^
I feel you. I used to live with this feeling before I started to act. Due to the age of the Internet, we are full of different ideas that can be incredibly good. But the common problem is the lack of knowledge on how to bring them to life. Also, if you think about an online business, you have to find a reliable company that will be able to help you in promoting your product or service you are going to create. When you look for such a company, pay attention to reviews and portfolio. For example, this marketing agency berlin has a good-looking website and a professional portfolio so I am sure they can be helpful.