The One-Page Startup Course
Starting up a technology-based company? Want to be a technopreneur? Here are highly recommended quick links to help you get going.
- Bootstrapping - is I think the best way to finance your new company. In effect, you are starting a business without borrowing money. Where do you get the money? By selling your product or service while you are developing it. Read The Art of Bootstrapping by Guy Kawasaki
- The Entrepreneurial Myth - this helped me get the right mindset in running a business. Sure, you're a very good techie -- but this is not enough to run your business. In fact, being a good technician makes you the main obstacle for your business growth. Read Chapter 1 of The e-Myth Revisited for starters.
- What about a Business Plan? I'm a veteran of many business plans. I've written them for my own startups, reviewed them for others, and read them at school. I've even got an MBA but experience has told me that a business plan does not matter in the end. If you're a beginner, writing a business plan may do you good -- go ahead, write one. It'll help clarify what your business is and set your goals and give you an idea when things are going right or wrong. But don't ever think your plan is perfect and everything not anticipated in the plan is an error to be corrected. Make your business plan your guide, but it should not control your destiny. Oh well, if you don't believe me, believe my online guru, Guy K.
- How to manage your startup - if you come from a large corporation using traditional project management techniques, you may have to throw away that mindset and do a more agile approach in managing your product releases. Here's a really good book from the developers of Basecamp. Read it free and online.
- Starting a Web 2.0 business, alone. Kawasaki is my favorite maven when it comes to starting up. He's got lots of experience and he doesn't mince words. Here's another highly recommended blog entry, whose title says it all: How I built a Web 2.0, User-Generated Content, Citizen Journalism, Long-Tail, Social Media Site for $12,107.09. Quote from the blog: "Here’s the bottom line: Whether Truemors succeeds or not, I learned a helluva lot. One thing is for sure: no entrepreneur can tell me that he needs $1 million, four programmers, and six months to launch this kind of company. With products like WordPress, MySQL, and Salesforce platform, things are a whole lot cheaper and easier these days."
Will add a couple more links as we move along.
Suggestions? Questions? Post a comment!
