Guest Post by Christopher Berkompas: Priorities for aspiring entrepreneurs
Maintaining the right priorities is difficult as an entrepreneur, especially when beginning a new venture. Based on my experience so far with Manage My Property, here are the most important milestones I would encourage an aspiring entrepreneur to pursue.1. Start a company
Avoid the temptation to sit back and theorize. Entrepreneurship is an intensely practical undertaking, and experience is the best teacher. Most of the necessary skills can't be taught in the classroom; they have to be learned in the field. Your success as an entrepreneur will be determined by how much knowledge you can bring to bear on your specific situation, not how well you can do on a test.
Start getting experience as early as you can. It takes time, and the more runway you give yourself, the better. Don't be a perfectionist. Your first venture doesn't have to be profitable. Treat the time spent as tuition. The experience you gain will give you a peg to hang your academic training on, if you choose to go that route.
2. Find a mentor
Avoid the temptation to go it alone. This is dangerous for a couple reasons. You might be bullish on your idea right now, but there will be points where you want to throw in the towel, and you will need encouragement to stay the course.
A mentor can also keep you from trying to reinvent the wheel. Instead of spending hours doing research or debating with your business partner, find someone who has dealt with this issue before, and ask them. Even if you have to pay for the advice, it is usually cheaper than finding the answer yourself.
Lastly, don't under estimate the power of the "Reality Distortion Field" (RDF) and its ability to delude you into believing just about anything. Having a mentor helps you gain the objectivity of an outsider which most entrepreneurs desperately need.
3. Start by developing your customers, not your product.
Be wary of spending time on developing your idea, product, or service. Focus instead on achieving product/market fit. Find out what your customers need, and then build that.
It is easy as an entrepreneur to think that you know what the market wants. But as Steve Blank points out, there are no facts inside the building. If you forge ahead without validating your assumptions by talking to customers, you might find yourself with an expensive hobby, not a profitable business.
At Manage My Property, we made the mistake of moving too quickly to product development. We took the information we'd gained by studying our competitors and talking in depth with a single customer, and spent hours nailing down a detailed spec. As it turned out, after months of development, some of the features turned out to be worthless to 90% of our audience. If we had spent more time getting to know our customers, we would have been able to launch sooner with a leaner product.
One final thought about failure. Entrepreneurship isn't safe. The best way to avoid failure is not to even try. But that happens to be a great way to avoid success, too. My best advice is to fail small. Get as close to your customers as you can, and iterate until you get it right.
Any current entrepreneurs out there? I'd be interested to hear your comments, or feedback.
Chris is co-founder of Manage My Property, a directory of property management companies that provides property management leads for management companies nationally.
posted by C.S. Hayden @ 6:01 PM
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