Hey Graham,
Welcome.
This is my experience. Take it with a grain of salt.
1. There will always be conflicting advice. Both sides have successful
examples. Quit your job. Stay with your job. Raise money. Bootstrap. Lean
startup. Fat startup. Get a cofounder. Single founder. Get different viewpoint
but realize there is no silver bullet. You are the one in charge and everyone
situation is different. My personal experience: doing it full time means I have
to confront the fact that I have no other excuses. I can't say 'I am just doing
that on the side, nothing serious'. It's either I make it or I make it.
2. Distribution is important. I have checked your blog. We have the same genes.
We are coders. We love to sit in front of computer and code. Unfortunately, no
one will find our products / services without a clear distribution strategy.
"How am I going to get my awesome products in front of my customers?" is one of
my questions every time I evaluate an idea.
3. New market vs existing market. Understand differences in market types. New
market means no one is looking for your product yet. No one realize they have
the problems that you have the solutions for. You need to create demand. Your
customers are not searching for the solutions in Google. This is usually fall
into "revolutionary idea" category. You need to have a clear finance plan. It
usually takes a long time to educate the market. No, 6 months is not long in
real world. Existing market is "a better mousetrap" category. It is generally
easier to market it. People understand the problems and looking for solution.
They are searching for it in Google.
4. Just do it. Ship that product out. You'll learn more by doing it. I read a
lot before I started and thought I would be invincible. Later I realize the
real education started in real world.
There are still more but those are few I have on top of my head. One thing for
sure. It will be a fun journey. Go do it!
Please feel free to email me if there is anything I can help.
- Hendro Wijaya
From: gra...@belmonttechnology.com.au
Subject: [SiliconBeach] Introduction and Question
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2010 20:42:03 +1100
To: silicon-beach-australia@googlegroups.com
I've been lurking here for a couple of months and only just noticed the
guidelines, specifically "no lurking!", so sorry. (How often do you read email
footers?)Apologies aside, here is a quick introduction, and my most pressing
entrepreneurial question:
IntroIn short, I'm a Software Engineer who lives in Sydney, writes a lot of
code both at work and home, and loves using technology to make people's lives
better and/or easier.If you want to know more about that you can read a bio
here.
I've joined the list because I've found over my ten years of experience that
it's frustrating when I have a great idea and the people above me, who make the
decisions, don't act on it.That's their prerogative, for sure, but I'd like to
be in the position where I get to make decisions, follow my own path and see
where that takes me.
QuestionMy questions is:
What tips do you have for starting a business part-time? (And getting to
full-time.)
I read Bart's "22 ways to fail" and noticed that "Don't give up your day job"
is apparently a great way to fail (d'oh!), so I wouldn't be surprised to get a
lot of "don't bother" answers.But I'm sure there must be people who've done
this and have either a success story, or an interesting failure that we could
all learn from.I've read Jason Cohen's "Employed with a side of startup", which
has some great advice.I'd love to just hear some tips from more people who've
been in the trenches and come out the other side wiser.
Cheers,
Graham.
--
Graham Lea
Belmont Technology Pty Ltd
gra...@belmonttechnology.com.au
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