Many ideas, so little time

[rene]

Hey All,

Im interested in finding out how the way entrepreneurs choose the business they start building. No doubt you have many ideas that could turn out to be enjoyable and profitable, though we are all limited by time and we cant follow each idea and see it come to fruition.

With some many ideas for a new business, how does one determine which one would be the most successful taking into account factors such as finance and time to market?

[sicnarftea]

choose according to where your interest and passion lies

[akula]

Hey All,

Im interested in finding out how the way entrepreneurs choose the business they start building. No doubt you have many ideas that could turn out to be enjoyable and profitable, though we are all limited by time and we cant follow each idea and see it come to fruition.

With some many ideas for a new business, how does one determine which one would be the most successful taking into account factors such as finance and time to market?

difficult question

firstly, most small businesses are either the product of family circumstances, or an employee taking over the job of their boss, or an employee turning to compete against their boss. therefore, what your proverbial brother in law wants to get into, or what your boss plans for 2007, are determinants of opportunity selection

often, entrepreneurs don't have the luxury to "determine which one would be the most successful [venture]". things just sort of happen and you play the cards you've bean dealt.

secondly, if you do, however, want to make rational decisions about which ventures to start and which ventures not to start - the question you're asking is "what are the characteristics of a good equity investment?".

this is an extraordinary complex area of industry practice and academic research. entire professions of venture capital and banking are concerned with the same question (what's a good investment?).

over time, professional investors develop a set of filters to grade different kinds of opportunities. it's commonly called due diligence screening. these screens can include any number of things like geographic preferences, the background of the management team, the size of the market, intellectual property rights etc etc etc...

for me - I like web based enterprise software in Australia. that's the kind of opportunities that I like for a lot of different reasons, some of which are personal (i.e. my educational background and place of residence).

[CP Mr Ofevaw]

There's no reason you can't have two (or more) startups going. However, that strongly depends on the type of business and the stage of the businesses. Technology businesses (particularly "dot com" companies) aren't all that time consuming, especially if you're an end-user service. For example, Craigslist only has around 20 employees (give or take 5), yet it draws in over 5 billion page views per month (not necessarily unique page views). It would be (relatively) easy to juggle TWO businesses of that stature versus trying to run a lawn mowing business and a carpentry service that undoubtedly offer a much lower ROI.

With that said, do a little bit of research on each idea and find out how profitable you think each idea could become. If you're talking about an end-user technology startup, then forget the businesses plan at this stage as they are just guesswork. Develop your service(s) and throw them out to the public and get a response. Refine your product/service to fit the needs of your customers. Once you make your first dollar, then it's time to start thinking about a business plan.

Why should you forget about a business plan at this stage? As I said, it's all guesswork. You might spend 8 weeks developing a rough draft for your business plan, only to launch the service and find out that people don't like it. Wouldn't it be much easier to launch the service in 4 weeks, see that people like it, and THEN write the business plan using facts?

[The Stealthy One]

I always consider three key things:

1. The amount of money I can make from the idea
2. The risk of going with and not going with each idea
3. How much I will enjoy each idea