Never Confuse Spending For Progress! – By this I mean, It’s not necessary to run out and lease an office, incorporate or form an LLC, get new business cards, letterhead, phone system, hire an answering service, hire an attorney, etc. Trust me, your first inclination will be to make your idea “real,” and to make it real, you’ll be thinking you need an office, cards, website, to incorporate, etc. This is absolutely not true and will only serve to drain your bank account of the limited funds that you’re most certainly going to need later on in your venture. Focus on proving your concept and market demand for as little cash as possible. Once you gathered this data, you’ll know if you should begin to ratchet up the spending. Good luck!
Posted by Doug Taylor, Jan 27, 2010 01:20 PM
Brock Predovich wrote on Feb 10, 11:47 am
Doug, love this, so true it hurts. How many people have I heard this happening to? too many. Another area I see this in is business plans. I wasted a hole damn year creating a business plan around an Idea I had. An idea! Instead of getting people together interviewing folks finding the right people building some mock ups, building anything! Instead I ended up with 66 page of sh@#. My intent was to get a VC investor behind it but what investor is going to invest in an idea. Investors, especially VC's, invest in businesses, they invest in things. not ideas. In alignment with you're advice, don't mistake work as progress. Unless it's work building out or prototyping your idea in not progress, its a distraction.
Doug Taylor wrote on Feb 17, 06:06 pm
Brock, thanks for the comment. Sounds like you've completed your first year at Trench University! ;)
rewgrermSmEmi wrote on Jul 22, 04:51 pm
waiting for next post
Doug Taylor wrote on Oct 28, 12:43 pm
Hi Halford, I've got a great new series coming out this fall. I'm also working on a book so my production schedule's been a little off this summer. Will keep you posted. Thanks for commenting!