Fail Fast or Win Big: The Start-Up Plan for Starting Now by Bernard Schroeder

Author:Bernard Schroeder [Schroeder, Bernard]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780814434796
Publisher: AMACOM
Published: 2015-02-17T14:00:00+00:00

KEY TAKEAWAY

You have several options to secure funding for your start-up. Examine your options carefully and then choose the best one for you. Investigate the new crowdfunding platforms as at least one of those options might be viable for you. That way you get the funds you need and keep as much equity as possible.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Opportunity Is Here and Everywhere

In addition to teaching entrepreneurship courses at San Diego State University, I am a director in the Lavin Entrepreneurship Center on campus and I participate actively in the local start-up community. So I am approached often by students and entrepreneurs (or would-be entrepreneurs) seeking my advice. More often than not, I am not interested in their idea per se. Instead, I ask about the marketplace, the industry, key trends, and their initial target segment. Most of the time, they don’t have all the answers and I send them off to acquire more information about their prospective opportunity. In this chapter, we look at opportunity from different perspectives and determine what an entrepreneur can do to prepare for such an opportunity. In particular, we’ll cover the following:

• The Entrepreneur’s Epiphany

• Targeting a Market

• Why Marketplaces Matter

• Types of Opportunities

• Key Elements in Finding Opportunities

“The entrepreneur always searches for change,

responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.”

—Peter Drucker, management guru

CAN YOU “CREATE” AN EPIPHANY?

In his book Myths of Innovation, Scott Berkum says that most people do not understand how entrepreneurs create new companies. He describes the myth of the “epiphany,” that light bulb that goes on in the head of an entrepreneur in the middle of the night. He reminds us of the expertise rule: that we begin to become experts in a given field only after we spend at least 10,000 hours (an average of 7–10 years) working on that craft or industry; at that point we begin to see things clearly and, especially, more opportunistically.

The epiphany is that sudden realization of a relationship, that merger of dissimilar thoughts. But as Berkum points out, it usually comes only after many years of familiarity with a subject. So, how can an entrepreneur increase the chances of having an epiphany that could potentially yield a new idea? Here are a few ways:

• Become an expert in your area of expertise. Berkum highlights several inventors or entrepreneurs who worked for years to solve a problem or to create a product. The 10,000 hours to become an expert sounds like a big number, but it’s only 7–10 years, assuming a normal work year. That time is probably less for would-be entrepreneurs, since they don’t have normal work years. But regardless of the time involved, use your expertise to leverage that knowledge and experience to create a new type of product or service.

• Look for emerging or disrupting trends. When Jeff Bezos observed the emergence of the Internet, he saw the potential for a new distribution platform for selling products. He just needed to validate that enough customers would exist in this new marketplace. He initially

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.