Entrepreneurial death-traps
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Entrepreneurs face all kinds of potential adversity -- some kinds can kill them, some kinds merely set them back a little. Some kinds are unpredictable, others much more so. The saddest failures are the conceivably predictable, lethal ones, the ones that could and should have been avoided.
As senseless as small business deaths are which fall prey to the many-times-tripped death traps, they can be damnably difficult to avoid. Many of them appear in the form of beautiful, well-worn paths which logic, greed and even common sense might suggest taking. How tragic that they take entrepreneurs over cliffs time and time again.
To compound the challenge of avoiding such a demise, none of these paths is assuredly fatal. The important point is that they can be, and have been for many others. Each should be avoided or tempered if at all possible.
Here are some entrepreneurial death-traps:
Read full article: Entrepreneurial death-traps
As senseless as small business deaths are which fall prey to the many-times-tripped death traps, they can be damnably difficult to avoid. Many of them appear in the form of beautiful, well-worn paths which logic, greed and even common sense might suggest taking. How tragic that they take entrepreneurs over cliffs time and time again.
To compound the challenge of avoiding such a demise, none of these paths is assuredly fatal. The important point is that they can be, and have been for many others. Each should be avoided or tempered if at all possible.
Here are some entrepreneurial death-traps:
- "Mousetrap" Teams
- Inadequate Pricing
- Insufficient start-up capital
- Failure to Look at the Downside
- Failure to Look at Industry Norms
- Lack of focus
- Bringing on the Vulture
- First Class from the Start
- Inappropriate Distribution Path to Market
- Emotional Litigation
- Product Never "Ready" for Market
- Low Barrier to Entry Growth Industry
- Inadequate Market Research
- Failure to Segment Market
- No Reason for Customer to Change
- Payback Can't Be Calculated
- Failure to Admit a Mistake
- Step Function Growth
- Betting the Ranch
- Ignoring the Handwriting on the Wall
- Spiraling costs
- Silliness phase
Read full article: Entrepreneurial death-traps
Small business pricing
Monday, April 11, 2005
It's tough out there, particularly because of layoffs and our sluggish economy. So what's a small business entrepreneur trying to make a living to do? Try these low-cost pricing strategies to keep sales moving.
TACTIC #1 -- Never simply slash your prices, unless you're trying to empty obsolete inventory. Instead, try repackaging your prices so they're more affordable in the short-run so more prospects can afford them.
TACTIC #2-- Create tightly niched product or service offerings. For example, if you're operating a personal concierge service, rather than just offer errand services at $25 an hour, try prepackaging specific errands with associated lower pricing. Why? Because you can offer a more aggressive price when isolating your fee to one particular service.
via WebProNews.com
How to write a business plan
Friday, April 08, 2005
McKinsey and Company guide on how to write a business plan is designed to help you in developing your business idea, "from concept to company". It details the contents, scope, and structure of a business plan and the expectations venture capitalists have when reading one, and provides valuable pointers on starting up a company.
The Guide is not intended as a business studies resource nor is it a theoretical
treatise on the nature of business plans per se. Rather, it offers practical tips to help you get started setting up your company. Naturally, there is no guarantee that all aspects of this Guide will be relevant to your particular company or that all topics relevant to your company will be covered. The "Key questions" about the main elements of a business plan make no claim to completeness; those questions not relevant to your specific business plan need not be answered.
If you are reading this Guide because you have a business idea you want to transform into a successful company, we offer you a word of encouragement: Make the most of this opportunity!
Start a start-up
Opening this weblog with an interestin essay about How to start a start-up.
You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all three will probably succeed.
And that's kind of exciting, when you think about it, because all three are doable. Hard, but doable. And since a startup that succeeds ordinarily makes its founders rich, that implies getting rich is doable too. Hard, but doable.
If there is one message I'd like to get across about startups, that's it. There is no magically difficult step that requires brilliance to solve.
