The solely interesting product isn’t sufficient  today if you want to reach a great numer of people, the more so if you want  the company to make money. It’s especially noticeable in internet businesses. What is also important is to find the way to earn money which means finding a so-called business model.

The title of this entry can sound not very seriously for some people, but it is the seriousness of this subject that doesn’t let people function normally. I wouldn’t limit it only to worrying – it leads to stress which probably most of people encounter every day. I don’t know an entrepreneur who wouldn’t worry about what is yet to come either all the time or at some stage of the business development. Some people  claim that over half of hospital beds are occupied by people with neurological or mental disorders, even if the direct symptom is somatopathy. They  are usually a result of accumulated problems and concerns about the future. Dr Alexis Carrel, a Nobel Prize winner, once said:

WHAT WILL YOU FIND OUT FROM THIS ENTRY?

• Is passion essential when setting up a business?
• What is necessary to make even the most clichéd idea profitable?
• How did I start my first business in England spending about 100 zl on it?
• How can you earn millions of zlotys on a blog?
• How is it possible that teaching people Excel can bring hundreds of thousands of dollars in income?

This entry is inspired by Michael Gerber’s book called „The E-Myth”. The subtitle of the book is „Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to do About It” and it focuses, as it was said, mainly on small enterprises ? Startup has a little different working scheme from a traditional small company (e.g. a bakery). However, there are some entrepreneur’s attributes which, in my opinion, in both cases are crucial to run a company well.

A work on your company can last for years, but to present your idea in front of an audience or investors you’ll sometimes have only… 2 minutes.

This is what pitch is all about – a short presentation during which you should be able to present plainly what you create and why anybody should be interested in it. Such presentations usually last from 2 to 10 minutes. Why such a short time? Because of several reasons:

If you haven’t read part 1, you can do it right here

WHAT WILL YOU FIND OUT FROM THIS ENTRY?

• What can be more important than the idea for a startup itself?
• What are the three methods of looking for a new business idea?
• What three rules should one follow when looking for a business idea?
• How did I choose the ideas that I later decided to take up professionally?

(więcej…)

This is the first entry of the series of posts about a turquoise startup (or generally speaking about a turquoise company).

If you don’t know what a startup is, read my post on this subject

Whoever goes out ahead and takes the risk of new challenges will probably meet with resistance or will be called naive, a dreamer, or a fool. – Frederic Laloux, “Reinventing Organizations”

(więcej…)

When writing a blog about startups it would be great to write  what a startup really  is. Not everyone reading  these entries has to be aware of that. In any case, it appears that even people interested in the subject sometimes have problems  defining what is and what isn’t a startup.

This topic is so extensive that I’m going to divide it into two parts. The first part is rather  addressed  to people who haven’t run a startup before.

WHAT WILL YOU FIND OUT FROM THIS ENTRY?

1. About the essence  of running a startup – how to define it in a few words.
2. What is  the purpose  of running a startup.
3. What questions you should answer before you  start thinking  about an idea for a startup.
4. Why the idea itself can be less important than all the other questions shown in this entry.
5. You’ll read a couple of inspiring topics which will probably change your nearest future.
6. You’ll read about my experiences with startup ideas within following weeks in the next part of this entry. 🙂

In  our life, we tend  to have  some  inconsistency – we say something and then do something else. If you are employing somebody in your company, you could have encountered a situation when your employee, on one hand, praised your company and claimed to be happy with the cooperation, and a month later he  quit his job and went to the competition. One day in dismay a  husband finds out that his wife is cheating on him, although he was sure that everything was okay. In trade it can turn out that everybody around praises your product, but no-one will eventually buy it.