Tag: start-up ideas

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Eighty percent of entrepreneurs make this costly idea mistake

Train your mind to look for and create income opportunities with the “Breakthrough Ideas” manual.

Most people wanting to start a new income stream come up with the wrong ideas because they focus on a product or service idea.

You see, when you go for a new idea you can face too many obstacles. You have to spend money testing your idea. You need to develop your idea and find distribution. All this costs money. The worst thing is that you only have an outside chance of success.

Even the big companies in FMCG don’t get new product development right. Something like 76% of new products in FMCG failed between 2011 to 2013 within a year. About 66% of the products never reach the sales volume of 10,000 items, according to a news report. Continue reading “Eighty percent of entrepreneurs make this costly idea mistake”

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Evaluating business ideas for college or university leaving graduates

Long Beach, Kommetjie. Photo Copyright by Chesney Bradshaw
Long Beach, Kommetjie. Photo Copyright by Chesney Bradshaw

You get people shouting stuff about small business ideas all over the Internet. One guy was screaming to get attention with the statement that an idea is 1% of success while execution is the 99%.

There is also that statement about 20% or even a lower 10% of ideas succeeding in their first year. This has merit when you consider that the study found that venture capitalists only express interest in fewer than 5% of new start-up idea proposals they review (Source: “Are “better” ideas more likely to succeed? An empirical analysis of start-up evaluation”). Continue reading “Evaluating business ideas for college or university leaving graduates”

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Where do small business ideas come from?

A rose-cut synthetic diamond created by Apollo...
 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Have you ever found a diamond in the ground, in a river or deep beneath the sea?

I have never met anybody who stumbled across a real diamond in nature. Most diamonds anyway are found in restricted areas that are demarcated for mining. I suppose if you, for example, lived along the Orange River you may have heard stories about the old diamond prospectors who came across these precious stones in the river. Continue reading “Where do small business ideas come from?”

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Is it time for a review of your start-up idea?

IMG-20130824-00497In the beginning of the year you promised yourself that you would get your best idea off the ground. This would be the year that you would make it happen. You would take small steps and with each one come closer to realising your goal. But now that the year is nearly over how far are you? Is it time for a review?

A product I’ve been working on reached a critical stage. The unit cost was much too high. I have had to find alternative suppliers to get the unit cost lower. This is the thing, it can take three times longer than you thought it would to bring your business plan into fruition and the costs magically double. Continue reading “Is it time for a review of your start-up idea?”

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5 ways to juice up your start-up idea

Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
Credit: Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain

A London cabbie driver was given two tickets to a West End show. He found out a bit about the show and realised it wasn’t for him. He thought that someone else might enjoy the show much more than he would so he left the two tickets on the back seat of his taxi. At the end of his working day, he took a look at his back seat to see if the tickets were gone. What he found was two tickets for the same show placed together with the ones that he had left on his back seat.

This may be another tall story but it highlights the need to come up with things that people really want. A West End show is much a product or entertainment solution as any product you may buy from your local supermarket or from an online retail store.

New business ideas for a start-up or boot-strapped business need to count. A bad idea that is the basis for a new product or service simply isn’t going to make money. But what’s a bad idea? Let’s rather flip that into a more positive statement: what makes a good idea? Continue reading “5 ways to juice up your start-up idea”

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Traps for first-time start-ups

2014-04-05 10.37.06I went on a trip down to Bloemfontein en route to a game park in the Free State where the Caledon and Orange Rivers meet. On the Saturday morning we went shopping in Bloemfontein in the smaller suburbs and came across a small burger business called Burger Mania that is doing very well.

On the way to the game park we came across a roadside stall that is doing a thriving business despite being situated in a remote area along the N1 highway. This roadside stall mainly stocks home-made food products and crafts that are made by locals. You won’t find one packet of branded chips there. Almost everything comes from small suppliers. The business owner told me that she’s been running her roadside stall for seven years and is doing well. Continue reading “Traps for first-time start-ups”

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What does it take to start something of your own?

Sheridan gym
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

On Saturday afternoon I met a young woman at the local gym who has four years in academic entrepreneurship training but has yet to start something of her own.

She is now selling subscriptions to the gym to hone her selling skills. After close to five years she still doesn’t have any clue about what she could start herself. Continue reading “What does it take to start something of your own?”

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What does it take to start something of your own?

Cover of "Start Your Own Business"
Cover of Start Your Own Business

On Saturday afternoon I met a young woman at the local gym who has four years in academic entrepreneurship training but has yet to start something of her own.

She is now selling subscriptions to the gym to hone her selling skills. After close to five years she still doesn’t have any clue about what she could start herself.

This is the way it goes for many would-be entrepreneurs. She has spent R200,000 ($20,000) to learn how to be an entrepreneur from a so-called top academic institution but still has nothing to show for it. You’d think that completing a degree in entrepreneurship would move you a lot closer to finding an idea to start your own business. But many people just try to get a degree certificate to have some paper behind their name. Yet after completing a four-year entrepreneurship degree you have to pay a lot back if your parents are not financing your education or if you were unable to get a study bursary. Continue reading “What does it take to start something of your own?”