Joshua_Naterman

Excellent advice.

My company is in a totally different sector, but we are being very careful to do exactly that: understand the development costs, pay the right people to help us craft our business plan so that we learn exactly what to expect in terms of "unexpected" delays, needing to shift with community needs, time for certain projects and what order to develop our community and our software, etc.

It's a lot of work to make sure you are really on top of these things, and it's worth the relatively small price you pay for good sound advice: I'm a stickler on this because it's good common sense, but also because my intro to business enterprises professor was huge on making us all understand that ~90% of businesses fail because of 2 things:

1) They fail to pay people a relatively small amount of money to ensure their business plan is really solid (primary reason for initial failure)

2) As they start to grow they do not delegate properly and remain micromanagers (primary reason for a growing company to stagnate and get overtaken by competition)

Well, we can't have pesky intelligent life on Mars to have to trouble ourselves with in a few billion years.

This is quote of the day material

Sure, and to be honest I think this page will do a better job than I can.

Business seems simple, and honestly it is: you only need 3 things.

1) A product (physical, a service, whatever) that you can produce and sell for a gross revenue that covers the cost of marketing, investor repayment, product stocking & production, wages for any other members of the team, and business expansion.

2) A customer base who can afford to buy your product in overall quantities that produces the gross revenue required for #1.

3) A marketing & sales approach that causes #2 to buy #1 and generate the revenue you need.

However, a LOT goes into planning for those simple things, and you will often not be able to pay wages for quite a while.

That's where having people with experience in successfully planning a business with similar circumstances makes a life-or-death difference for your business, and a lot of people are just too cheap, lazy, or prideful to do it. They usually can, I mean anybody can work their ass off and go hungry for 6 months to save up 800-1200 bucks if they REALLY want to. If they can't, I hate to say it but they're up against a hard barrier to success and they're probably going to fail simply because they cannot put the effort needed for a high chance of success.

People do beat those odds, but they are nearly always huge on self-education and instead of spending the money they take the time to read, learn, understand, role-play their business model, and use that to make plans... and they run into somebody who believes in them and fills a monetary and/or skill gap that lets them take the leap forward they need.

In my case, I have built a strong network of people who believe in what we're doing and in my ability to produce results, and we have been able to pull together the necessary start-up capital from personal funds. We'll be working on investor pitches later this year and I'm paying for extra hours to specifically prepare for that with my team so that we have a rock-solid approach.

I also have managed to make friends with people who are successful in business, on small scales and large scales, and I listen to them intently.

That has always been the world we live in.