Entrepreneurship Tips — Raw Startup

By Gene Marks  Amid the economic upheaval of the pandemic, it may seem counterintuitive that startups have reached unparalleled levels Silvette Bullard is a school counselor by day and bakes in her spare time for customers. She launched her Julobell Bakery in June 2020. Photograph: Robin Rayne/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock   There have been more new businesses formed so far this year than ever. Literally ever. A year ago I wrote about the surge in startups, 12 months later the trend has continued in a big way. According to data from the US Census Bureau analyzed by the Economic Innovation Group, there were about 1.4m new...

Well, I think the question is the wrong one to ask, really. It trivializes entrepreneurship. Would you ask, “How do I do my first brain operation?” Or “how do I play Carnegie Hall?  Nope!  The question should be what do I do to prepare to launch a startup? First understand that ideas are literally worthless. The press promoting the concept that an "idea is worth millions" is a problem. Building a company takes many things, and the person with only an “idea” has no chance. It is typically a 3 to 5 year to turn an idea into a business....

In any startup company, EACH employee MUST wear many hats. In a large company, job specialization is the rule. However, job specialization does not make for a successful startup, as it requires too many people and both the costs and risks would greatly increase with the added levels of people and communication. It is a well-known fact that there are diminishing returns with each layer and additional employees on any project. This is even more pronounced in knowledge-intensive areas and professional services like software engineering and other knowledge and design-intensive areas.  (Read The Mythical Man-Month). In early-stage and smaller companies,...

Launching a startup company may be the hardest thing you ever do.  This is a big question with many moving parts and hundreds of things to get right that comes from experience and art, not just black and white answers. However, there are many things that can be easily agreed on that will go a long way to getting you there.  First, let's talk about the stages because it is clear that there are very different skill sets and modes of operation at different stages of the company's development.  Let's call these stages Raw Startup, Early Revenue, and Established.  Raw...

You can't be all things to all people Ever notice how that last 10% of almost any job takes half the time or more? This is a simple fact of life in most tasks because the more detail you try to finish the further you get up that exponential cost/time curve to perfection. Even painting your house perfectly is an unachievable and ridiculously expensive goal. In fact, an excellent job will cost twice as much as a very good job, and that will cost twice as much as a "good" job, which will cost twice as much as an OK...