If you’re a business owner, and especially if you’re in the expert business, you should know this small business fraud story. It involves a very sophisticated scheme, including a fraudulent cashier’s check, and a very well-faked charity, that would have fooled me. This could happen to me or to you Melinda Emerson, a good friend, […]
Tim Berry
This is The Best Place to Start Your Business
The best place to start your business… …is where you are. Sure, there are exceptions. Maybe you’re young, and have no roots. Or maybe you just want to move to somewhere else. But, barring special cases, look around you. The best place to start you business is where you are. In my email and on Quora I […]
Where Can I Sell My Business Ideas?
I get it. What a nice dream … just sell the business idea, and let somebody else take the risk, find the money, and do the work. Except that the work, the risk, and the money is what gives the business idea value. Don’t Dream. Execute. So nowhere. The answer to your question about where […]
Should You Start a Business? Test Your Idea First
As I write this, during the worst pandemic in 100 years, in the grips of a severe economic slowdown — let’s all hope it’s just recession, not depression — people still want to start new businesses. We still come up with new business ideas. Some ideas come from the new problems we are experiencing, some are long-standing good […]
Do Those Summaries. Use Those Frameworks. But Don’t Think They Replace Business Planning.
There is some bad advice floating around in the startup world. Useful as the Lean Canvas is, and despite some well-intentioned suggestions of summaries, those are not business plans. They don’t deal with the drivers and components of cash flow. They don’t set milestones, metrics, and tracking. You can’t run a business with them. And […]
10 Prevailing Myths of Business Ownership
I was asked about common myths of business ownership that people still believe in 2019. I came up with a list of 10 common myths. Do you agree? That the business idea matters. As if ownership ought to depend on having the big idea. As if people steal ideas, or that’s even possible, much less […]
Know Your Industry: Average Margins
Know your industry. In a recent post here, I wrote that the most common stumbling point I see in multiple business plans is absurdly unrealistic profitability. Specifically … Most of the business plans I see project profits too high, or profits too early. In the real world, startups choose growth or profits, not both. The plans […]
Advice to Young People Looking to be Entrepreneurs
How does a young person work towards a career in entrepreneurship? I was asked this question on Quora. Here’s my answer. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. Make sure you focus on your education while you’re young; don’t think success is supposed to happen immediately. School is the best way to build options later on. […]
10 Tips on How to Protect a Software Idea
How to protect a software idea? I recently answered a related Quora question on this one. I took parts of this post from a previous post on how to protect an idea while building a business, but this one focuses more on software, specifically. That’s where I’ve spent most of my career, and still my favorite business, by […]
5 Most Important Illusions About Startups
Q: What are some illusions about start-ups? A: here’s my list of the five most important illusions about startups The illusion of the idea. Few businesses have truly new ideas. Apple didn’t; Facebook didn’t; Google didn’t. They took an existing idea and did it better, or differently. Quite often the second or third entrant into […]
