Start-up Advice

A few suggestions on how to avoid major potholes when getting your business on the road:

• Find out who your customers are, including both the big ones nearby that you may need initially, as well as the diversity of smaller ones that you will need to grow.
• Strive to understand the real costs of taking your product from prototype stage to sales, and look for efficient routes to get to the market as soon as practical.
• Make a healthy profit, revenue is the best source of funds to grow a business.
• Engage a few trusted advisors who have experience in growing businesses and will roll up their sleeves when it’s time to begin scaling the business.
• Address intellectual property issues early on to ensure that core assets are owned and that you have sufficient freedom to operate and have legal insurance.
• Design the right business model to create, deliver and capture value in the market, including definition of how you will gain and maintain trust of new customers, barriers to entry, channels to advertise your products and services, your sector focus, the activities that will need to be managed, mechanisms to control costs and accelerate sales, and the team and partners involved.