When you have a idea

(This is a guest post from Steven's Entrepreneurship Blog)

People who are interested in making a startup company are usually smart people. They tend to have ideas all the time, good ideas that solve some problems in the current market. The next step is typically try to attract people with the similar interest and vision to build a team toward the common goal. It all sounds reasonable but the funny thing is most of the time people are not willing to commit that much in the beginning. In the other words they are chickens rather than pigs.

A reputable entrepreneur might pull that off effortlessly as he oozes leader's charisma and backed by successful stories. Typically people would find it a lot more comfortable to follow this type of leader instead of someone who are new to the entrepreneurship world. Here are my suggestions:

Don't Wait For the Others

I know it might not be easy to understand why we should hastily dive into the startup venture without validating how good an idea is. But the cruel fact is you will never know the full picture before you start. Market validation with hard numbers is nice if you are pitching to a VC because they are paying money out to you, and the ultimate goal is to get a lucrative return in the investment. They don't care too much about what problem you are trying to solve as that's only a mean to an end for them. However, this strategy will need to change if you are recruiting people because they care exceedingly about the problem you are solving. I find the more effective way is to have some prototype that explains your idea and its application to get some responses.

Show Confidence

A prototype (preferably a working one) worth a thousand words in showing how confident you are to your own idea. If you truly believe something is worth doing and the world is dying for a solution you would commit more than just talks. Finding something with that attributes is hard but it helps you and the team motivated in the long term.

What if I Can't Code?

Find someone who can and pay them. The most important thing is to get things off the ground and how you do it isn't that important. I've heard a founder with a legal background outsource his idea to an Indian developer just to get things started. If you think your idea truly rocks you would get out of your way to get it done ASAP. Also I found when recruiting, developers are drawn to a team that has a working prototype. Developers love to see the inner working of things just out of curiosity. That's why they chose to be developers.

Don't Try to Lead

I had spent months to understand leaders do not build followers intentionally. They just do what they think what is right and in time followers would come. If you are putting together a technical team or if you are finding a technical co-founder the best strategy is to start building it rather than trying hard getting free development resources for your idea. If it has certain value the rest would come. But first you need to believe in it completely.

(Image from TalkDroid)

Make it easy for customers

This is a guest article from Steven Cheng

Last night I saw a movie (Everything Must Go) starring Will Ferrell.

Spoiler Alert

In the story Nick (starred by Will Ferrell) was fired from his job, kicked out by his wife on the same day. Because the law prohibits people from living on their front lawn so he had to sell his stuff that were thrown out by his furious wife. As the story developed he found a kid to help him with the sale. When he started to teach the kid how to sell stuff some interesting dialog happened.

• Make it easy for customers - A first lesson Nick taught the kid in the movie. This is not limited to the functionality of the product offering but equally applicable to the purchasing process. A case study ($300 millions button) describe a common user behavior in e-commerce system. By removing the "Register" button to enable users make purchases has a profound effect that boosted the annual revenue by $300 millions.
• Focus on the benefits - Nick as a veteran sales man taught the kid when customers are asking for bargains, focus on the benefit to make them feel the product worth every penny. This is generally a good strategy but it should be used carefully. When we sell something to customers we have to focus on benefits customer can perceive and deem has a certain value to them. It's not good enough if a product can do a lot of things that the targeted users don't care about. An experienced sales person reads the customers and focus on the benefits that will bring them.
• Go extra yard - Customers are hard to impress. If we do things according to their expectation than they will be satisfied customers, not impressed customers. They will certainly come back but they are not likely to go around and tell people how impressed they are. Try to find out what they want and go extra yard to impress them has an unimaginable effect.
• Know your product and your customers - Some companies put together a sales team after a product finishes development. What they look for inside the sales team is usually their connections but rather their expertise to the product. They optimistically hope these sales people with little knowledge with the product can complete sales. Does it work? Yes, for a short term but eventually when the sales team run out of people to sell to the revenue stream slumps like a busted hot air balloon. A smart manger should always find people with genuine interest to the product so they are not meeting their quota, but also providing useful feedback for the product.

In the end of the say we all have something to learn from a yard sale :)

(Image from http://collider.com/)

Do you have what it takes to build a startup?

Many might think this is too hard because not a whole lot of people are doing this. While the rest might think it's easy because they see all sorts of technology offerings in the market and it doesn't seem not too hard to build them. My take on this it really depends but the first thing is to get your mindset in the right position. I suggest:

• Be active and reach out. You might be a rookie but people will admire your spirit if you try hard.
• Be communicative. An awesome idea is worthless if you can't convince anyone into believing it. Try to pitch the idea to people close to you, like friends and familiy members. If they can't grasp the concept you need to try harder.
• Always question yourself. Sometime an idea can spawn spontaneously without any supporting evidence. Do yourself a favor, before dive into the implementation you should spend some time to make sure it's what the market wants.
• Be patient. Nothing is free and available around the corner when there are people involved. Frustration can easily set in if things do not happen as expected. Rinse and restart but never give up.
• Be self-disciplined. The timeline can potentially drag on forever if you are in total control of what to do and deliverable. Try to think as you are your own employee and ask more from yourself.
• Relax and have fun. Regardless if you succeed in the end. If you tried hard in the process you won't walk away empty-handed.

These are couple of things off the top of my head. Welcome to contribute your experiences.

洋洋灑灑繞英文，決定方編閱讀來個中文重點精華。

在創業路上我建議有這幾個心態:

• 積極投入跟多出去跑，創業靠的就是人際。
• 學會溝通能力，自己的Idea要至少能說服身邊的人
• 不斷質疑自己的點子究竟有沒市場價值，最快的方法是問你的使用群。
• 有耐心一點，有些事情超過自己掌握不要急。
• 保持自律，對自己要求嚴格如要求員工。不然時間很快就拖過了。
• 放輕鬆跟找到趣味之處，有努力過必有收穫。

同步發佈於 http://stevenc81.tumblr.com/

Steven茶水間首部曲

首先我想先感謝Startup工程師熱情邀請我來共筆茶水間，畢竟我以前也是這邊的粉絲。

剛滿30的感覺很複雜，似乎經歷累積不少但是環顧自周卻也沒什麼成就。這個年紀青黃不接說老不老說年輕也沒幾個人會同意。我畢業後花了一些時間在演算法跟程式設計上面，所屬的區塊剛好很尷尬，不是前端，也不是後端，而是一個商業軟體的核心邏輯。這樣的技能對現下的網路科技創業其實沒有太直接的幫助，但是往事不可追只能繼續往前走。

卸下工程師的職務後花了近兩年時間做產品規劃管理，帶領研發及品管團隊把現有的產品做一個大幅度的改革。只奈最後與經營者理念不合只好求去。無論如何這段經驗卻開啟了我一絲絲對創業的興趣，如果能管理一個產品不就很接近管裡一個公司嗎? 天真的我辭去了工作在往這方面努力中，如果在創業的場合見到我歡迎來打聲招呼。

在茶水間我將會貢獻一些創業期間的坎坷心得跟大家分享，希望對創業有興趣的你有幫助。

Steven Cheng