The Startup Journey

"Business plans should be the last thing you do, not the first. The common wisdom seems to go like this: 'I've got a great idea, so I guess I better write a business plan'. Wrong," says Jeff Cornwall, the Jack C. Massey Chair in Entrepreneurship at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. According to him, entrepreneurs should get the following elements in place before sitting down to write the biz plan; Research the market to make sure that there is really a market. Try to figure out what a customer might pay for what you want to sell. And look carefully at all of the competition to see if that market is already being nicely taken care of. And by the way, there is always competition, no matter what you try to tell me to the contrary. If the market potential is marginal, go on to your next idea. Examine what it will cost to provide the service or make the product. Compare this cost to what you figured out you think you can charge in the previous step...