8 Apr 2006 @ 15:29
Caterina Fake, who was one of the founders of Flickr, said that now is not a good time to start a business. A lot of people disagreed. David Heinemeier-Hanson, of 37Signals, who created Ruby on Rails, says it is always a good time to start a business, if you do it right. Dave Pollard of "How to Save the World" has some good commentary, and says, amongst other things, that it is always a good time to start a business if you can answer yes to these three questions:- I've identified a real need no one else is meeting effectively, and I know why no one else is meeting it effectively.
- I've identified a team of people who (a) collectively have the skills and knowledge needed, without a lot of overlap, to bring this product or service to fruition, (b) believe passionately in the project to bring this need to market, (c) really like each other, and (d) know what they're getting into and have reasonable expectations of the journey they're about to undertake.
- The whole team are competent and continuous innovators, improvisers, and learners.
He might just be right about that. He also outlines 10 steps of what he calls The Natural Enterprise:- Find and support the people you want to work with
- Establish your values, success measures and operating principles
- Find the unmet needs you want to fill
- Create and manage supportive networks and alliances
- Design and test possible solutions to the unmet needs
- Organically obtain and manage needed resources
- Market your offerings virally
- Track your performance against your success measures
- Innovate continuously
- Improvise continuously, avoiding the landmines
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