Tidbits to first time Entrepreneurs from a first time Entrepreneuer.

Not in chronological order.

• The idea may not generate money. Without money the business or startup cannot survive.

• Ideas are cheap. Do not be secretive of your ideas. Execution is hard. Many fail at it.

• You will generate 100 ideas a day for your business or startup. Do not jump to execute them. Write it in a book and refer later.

• Learn the difference between business and a startup. Each need different mindsets and approaches.

• Before starting the product or service you should try to understand the current state of the market and the industry. Building without research is like going without a map into an unknown jungle.

• Do not get fooled by a big volume of an industry. Your idea may be just a water bottle in a big ocean.

• The entrepreneurship journey is like taking offroad from highway and going into an unknown forest and building a tribe and small camp and laying a road back to highway for people to come to your camp. Easy to tell as a story but difficult to execute.

• You should figure out whether you fit into entrepreneurship journey or not. Both yes and no are valid. Nothing wrong in anything.

• Market analysis is counting the number of people who are willing to try and pay for your product among the desired population.

• If your only income stream is your new business or startup, keep a backup for atleast three years. If you do not have a backup, you neither can build the startup nor take care of your family. If you are single, that’s a different story.

• Think of revenues from day one. Do not get fooled by big names who only burn cash. They are exceptions and have a different business strategy altogether.

• People does not straight away pay for the product. It takes a lot of mental struggle for them to pay for anything. It is our job to convince them to buy through our marketing.

• Your marketing should go side-by-side your product. It is a core part of your business.

• Always remember people renew subscription only on the day of renewal not before.

• Most of the people are living on pay check to pay check. Do not assume people will buy because you think they have money.

• For higher margins, we need to build for rich people and make it a luxury. The cost to make something luxury is also huge. It is done through marketing, scarcity and psychology.

• Luxury creates a benchmark for two-third population to achieve. You can create a status game to play.

• People like to show off no matter what they say. Few like to keep a low profile. Let them show off with your product or service. That is a crown jewel for your business.

• Great product with a great community will keep the business sustainable and profitable.

• It is all about people. Every code you write is for some human. Before writing a single line of code, empathize with the human using it.

• A user can think your product can help them. But the same user may not pay for your product.

• Understand the difference between pain killer and vitamin. Apply that to your business or startup.

• Great technolgoies and startups can also die.

• Build for people. Not all people are same. We should know whom we are building for.

• Who is your customer, where to find your customer are the two important questions you should keep asking and optimising for years.

• The market size determines the upper limit a business can cater.

• The core business should be lean and agile. You should never have a complicated internal business structure.

• All complicated systems are built upon simple systems that worked.

• Any simple system can grow into complexity. Any complex system can be trimmed down to simplicity.

• We should not add items to substitute the core business. It should be an another business.

• One business, one work.

• Many verticals for the business at the beginning of your business or startup will not work.

• Every business is dependent on something, starting with Nature.

• The more dependencies a business has, the more sensitive it becomes to change. We call it market forces. Keep your dependencies as low as possible.

• There are only two ways to become profitable.

    - High volume, lower margins.

    - Low volume, higher margins.

• People we are dealing with does effect our business. Bad customers will affect the business badly.

• Based on the people’s education background, we need to take care of marketing message. You should not assume people will understand.

• Sometimes it becomes too late to fix a business.

• Sometimes it is good to end the business and restart something.

• Without a community, it is hard to build a business. More true for bootstrapped businesses.

• Community is people. Business is for the people.

• High margins should be added from the beginning. When there is a competition, we can add more add-ons instead of cutting down the margin and become more appealing.

• Consultancy services does not make us rich. Exceptions are those who do it at scale and who are niche and irreplaceable.

• Every hour we spend is costly. Spend wisely.