So you’re thinking about starting a business?  You have an idea, but don’t know if now is the time to do it?  Maybe the idea is good, but you may not be the person to turn it into a business?

So how do you figure out what to do?  The bad news is that there is no blueprint for the successful entrepreneur because the entrepreneur is necessary but not sufficient for success.  It takes the right person at the right time in the right market with the right product or service. 

For right now though, let’s focus on the entrepreneur.  They are just plain different from other people.  The figure below is a humorous way of showing this.

The key points are a personal vision, a desire to work at it, the confidence to withstand hearing ‘NO’ a lot, and some ability to convince others to follow.  If you have all of that, then consider the timing.

 It is never a perfect time to start a new business, but some times are harder than others.  I am not talking about the state of the economy.  A bad economy now may just meant that by the time you get your product ready to sell, the economy will have recovered and that could be the perfect time as far as the market is concerned.  I am talking about your personal timing.  If you are married, can your spouse support you and your family while you work on your idea?  If you have got 2 college students you are supporting, it is going to be hard to lose your current income no matter how good your idea may be.  Are you and your significant other able to deal with the demands of starting a company?  Is it going to be ok that you are never home, working weekends, missing birthdays and anniversaries?

Finally, do you have a basic idea of the business components of your business?  The first requirement is an idea.  That idea doesn’t have to be a full fledged product.  It can be something as simple as ‘people don’t like logging in to multiple social networks, they should be able to have one interface to all their networks’.  That particular idea was one that started Hootsuite, now a Top 100 website in the USA.  The second requirement is an idea of who will buy this product and how it will be bought.  If your idea is ‘good for everyone’ it is almost certainly not easy to sell to everyone.  Finally, you need a statement of why your idea solves a critical problem or important need for your customers.  You don’t need to cure cancer, providing entertainment is a core human need.  You do need, however, the ability to say in a single sentence what benefit your customers will receive.

On January 26, 2012, at 6pm we will be discussing these topics and others with a group meeting here at BizTech.  At the end of the evening, we will ask every participant to spend a minute talking about their idea and the group will vote on the best idea.  The winner gets a desk in our bullpen, access to the facility, and mentoring for 2 months to continue working on their idea.

We expect some interesting guest speakers who are successful entrepreneurs to be able to share their impressions on what it takes to succeed.  This is the first of 5 such evenings we will host culminating in a business plan contest where the winners present their ideas to local funders.