At the VentureStart launch yesterday we got many questions from aspiring entrepreneurs, and one that resonated from the solo entrepreneurs was: “How do I start?”
If you’re a Sacramento entrepreneur, you should definitely look at sacstarts.com. You’ll find fellow Sacramento startups to talk to and share experiences with. You’ll get some great advice from your peers.
If you have recently graduated or just want to get a great education in entrepreneurship, then look into the Sacramento Entrepreneurship Academy. You’ll get to know peers eager to learn everything about entrepreneuring, and the faculty are drawn from local Sacramento angels and Sacramento investors, as well as successful local entrepreneurs and business people.
Here are some other general thoughts to ponder:
You first need to assess, however loosely your market size, your value proposition to your potential customers or audience and how you might make money. Determine whether this will be a lifestyle company (just an income for you as cash flow, albeit a great one!) or a growth company (build value in the stock for you and investors to get that pot of gold one day). What follows is advice for the growth company scenario.
Go find a partner/co-founder, and “sell” him or her on your ideas. That person should have a complimentary set of skills to your own. (You could even find that person by networking through sacstarts.com.)
- If you are the visionary, then find an analytical person who will question everything and be the “but” in your life (and you’d better respect each other and get along).
- If you have an idea for a web business, but aren’t a geek, find a geek as a co-founder. It’s better than raising money to pay for one.
- If you are geek, can write code all day and night, find a business person to do the market evaluation, business development, sales, and other business stuff.
Bottom line – don’t hoard the ownership in your company-to-be. Spread it around since it takes more than one set of skills to make a company go. Great businesses are mostly more about execution than about the founding idea.
Find some experienced business experts to be informal advisers but don’t offer stock compensation until you are properly set-up to do so. Beyond committed co-founders never discuss or promise any stock issues; you might make verbal agreements that will come back to bite you.
When you have really decided you want to do it, determine the split of ownership between co-founders – tough to do but a must sooner rather than later — and quickly get the right attorney to help you put the proper legal framework in place.
