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J
OI N O F FICI A L
G
RO U P O N
m one the growing bread of entrepreneurs in the UK who built a business rightafter graduating from university. I’mthe founder of Kwiqq
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SocialNetworking Platformand Anderstand
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Web Design and build.Recently I have been active in thehelping others developing their ownbusiness throughMake Your Mark and launching SUE
(
Sussex University Entrepreneurs
)
. For my e
ff
, Observer / Courvoisier’s Future 500
(
2008
(
2008
)
. My personalambition is to get moreuniversity graduates to start their o wnbusinesses or think as anentrepreneur. The last few weeks I have been getting a huge number of enquiriesfrom budding entrepreneurs foradvice on how to build a business. Although I’m not sure if there areany rules or best practices inentrepreneurship, there are a few things which I have learnt fromdeveloping Kwiqq. Blog was firstfeatured on theKwiqq Blog .
about Raj
I’
S u a l u m n i E n t r e p r e n e u r s
introduction
Shout about your Ideas / Marketing
I get fairly confused when people make me sign NDAs
(
Non Disclosure Agreements
)
orfeel that if they tell their idea, it willbe stolen. There is very tiny chancethat someone will steal your idea and implement it as well as youcould. Rule of thumb: people only copy ideas once the product orservice is successful.Hence talk about it, tell all yourfriends and family, maybe they might know someone who couldhelp you out. Make presentations, videos and images of your idea upload them toSlideShare,YouTube/ VimeoandFlickr/
Facebook. In general marketing issomething many entrepreneurs puton the back burner, the sentiment isto come back to it when things areready. My advise is to prepare yourmarketing as you develop yourbusiness. This way you don’t have todevelop it at a later stage.If you feel marketing is not yourstrength get a PR company onboard, again this needs to be doneearly on. The later you leave it theless e
ff
ective the campaign wouldbe.
No man is an island
Most peoplehave an idea and feel they canshoulder the load of developing thebusiness. Although in reality any good business needs atleast twopeople. In my experience yourfounding team’s skills needs to tickall these boxes: sales, marketing,legal, accounting/finance andoperation/product development. Itsrare to find someone who has allthese skills and carry out all thetasks.My advice is to find people atnetworking events, social networksetc who you could bring in oroutsource to. Think how would youfinance getting these peopleonboard for atleast one year. My advice is not to think beyond that,as you never know how quickly yourbusiness would develop. Apart from the professionals in yourteam, you also need a supportnetwork. During the early stages of a business things can be a littledisheartening and you needsomeone to speak to just to get youthinking about something otherthan your business. This could be your partner or perhaps your friendcircle.
Most entrepreneurs fail because they give up
Most start
-
ups don’t make it because they giveup. As a company founder you needto be positive, even if the idea isflawed you need to find ways of improving it and maintaining themomentum. You are an inspirationto investors, partners, employees etcthey are putting in resourcesbecause they trust you. So you needto give most events a positive spinand develop your idea.Giving up is not an option !
Pick up skills as you go
When you start a business you have to bethe sales person, marketer, designer,accountant etc. Most peoplestarting business, after few years of work experience, wouldn’t have theskills to undertake some of thesetasks. The only way is to overcome this isto learn, my recommendation is toread as many blogs and books onstart
-
ups as possible. They not only educate you but inspire you. When i was starting up I spent 1/4th my time reading, you would often findme atBordersreading the latestbook on business, sipping Starbucksand then back home to read a blog.Often a good friend of mine JonMarkwelland I use to exchangelinks, very valuable to exchangethese free resources amongst yourcolleagues.
Networking
Business networking events are held in most cities of the world, where business people cometogether and speak openly abouttheir business. If you are a bedroom geek thinking ‘I will do that oncemy product is out of stealth mode’then my friend you are mistaken.You need to start networking before you have an idea for your product.Often networking can stimulatenew ideas just by listening to others.It also helps to market your productand opens door to partnerships.Real life networking can’t bereplaced by online networking, evenif its a skype video chat. Sounfortunately Mr Bedroom geek you will need to step into the real world and get out there !
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Get trained
Like most skills in lifelike sports, professional or academicrequires training. Getting trained inentrepreneurship is tricky as thereis so much to cover. Saying that youcan identify things you are perhapsnot very strong at. Once you haveidentified these get in touch with your localBusiness LinkorEnterprise Gateway Serviceto keep you informed via email on seminars.Most government organisationshave free seminars at knock o
ff
prices to get budding entrepreneurstrained. I suggest you attend theseand sign up to your localorganisation’s newsletter.
Starting business with a friend.No !!
I have heard severalhorrorstorieson going into business withfriends and I have one of my own.Its great if you become friendsthrough business, although theother way round generally has a tragic ending. Last thing you want is your business to go pear shapedbased on the relationship with youbusiness partners.Ideal way to find a business partneris through your business contactbook
(
if you have one
)
or throughnetworking events. Keep therelationship professional butfriendly and you will go a long way.
Business Model NOT EQUALAdvertisement revenue
Thispoint is specially relavant to media company startups, who building a business on getting as many usersonboard as possible, hoping tomonetisation throughadvertisement. Whilst I like thebusiness model and severalbusinesses like Facebook, YouTubeetc have executed with success, itsnot an easy one to get investmentfor. It is even harder to convinceinvestors given the currenteconomic climate.Fundamentally investors lovenumbers so if you came with a proposition like, I have 1000 userson my website in my town, eachpaying
$
10/month and profit of
$
3/ user/month. Now the investorthinks, if I put in some money toreplicate this in 100 cities thecompany would make
$
300,000. The decision becomes simpler and your venture gets funded !Having just genaralised the‘advertisement as a revenue model’ Imust also point out that there areexceptions to the above. Especially if you are building an innovativeadvertising platform. Ad platformsis not the sames as sticking bannersall around the website. Look atGoogle advertsthey are aninnovative, undistrating and simple way of advertising. Other sites likeFacebook, Twitteretc are stillsearching for similar revenuestreams. So its not that easy but if you crack it, sky is the limit !
Boot strapping to product
Building a product which can beprovided by channels to a segmentof the market is a tried and tested way of building a successfulbusiness. Generally to develop a product an upfront cash injection isrequired, typically investors are very useful at this stage.Many companies especially startedby founders with no business trackrecord, find it extremely hard toraise cash. Your best bet is to workout a way to generate cash, typically by providing a service likeconsulting, save some money andthen develop your products on theside. Many companies like37 signals built a company supplying SaaS
(
Software as a Service
)
using client’sprojects as a way to fund thedevelopment. This way of building a product or a company is oftenreferred to as Boot
-
strapping.It also helps to market your productand opens door to partnerships.Real life networking can’t bereplaced by online networking, evenif its a skype video chat. Sounfortunately Mr Bedroom geek you will need to step into the real world and get out there !
Take less risks and reducespending
Early stage of thebusiness its all about keeping thecosts low. Your strategy should be todo things yourself but don’tcompromise on quality. Pay forthings which will guarantee a highROI
(
Return on Investment
)
. If there is something you are notparticularly good at, outsource it orbring someone onboard.For instance if you can’t build a website don’t try and hack togethera HTML site. Websites are now considered as face of the company,its your branding, bread and butterhence don’t take chances. The oddsof you following all theaccessibility and design correctly are tiny. Youmight as well get a designer on thecase, they won’t cost you the worldbut will ensure you present yourself well.
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