[Bored]

Originally Posted by akula

Right…do you understand what you have in front of you as a company founder? How does understanding this reality make you feel?

I look forward to the next post.

Really awsome and informative posts. I just hope you don't start charging me .

Yes I understand what I have in front of me.

This reality makes me feel intrigued. Starting from the scratch really intrigues me to how I can be able to literally create a company with my own hands. Nothing to me is more satisfying than that.

I know I have a lot to learn, and I strongly believe entrepreneurs are not naturally born; it takes more than genes to work your way up. Hearing this reality is only bringing me closer to my way up there.

[akula]

Originally Posted by Bored

Really awsome and informative posts. I just hope you don't start charging me .

Yes I understand what I have in front of me.

This reality makes me feel intrigued. Starting from the scratch really intrigues me to how I can be able to literally create a company with my own hands. Nothing to me is more satisfying than that.

I know I have a lot to learn, and I strongly believe entrepreneurs are not naturally born; it takes more than genes to work your way up. Hearing this reality is only bringing me closer to my way up there.

Ok, good. For now, I'm gonna leave you to meditate on the prospect of having the dual role of being a private equity investor and a company founder. The two additional roles you will need to understand are those of being a senior executive and a company director. But you don't need to know this right now.

What you do need is to write an essay/report defining the kind of problem you are hoping to solve. The definition should be two-five words. The explanation and analysis of all the angles should be a good 10 pages. But you can get away with just bullet points. If you can communicate these things, post them here and inspire others to care about your cause, you are on your way to finding meaning to your life.

E.g. I am concerned about the problem of severe loss of lifestyle experienced by today’s retirees and over 50 million people who will retire over the next 15 years in US and other industrialized countries.

It's a severe problem because it has a direct negative impact on the quality of life experienced by millions of families.

Likewise, severe loss of lifestyle in retirement is a major looming problems for governments, the welfare system etc etc...the tax revenue ramifications are etc etc the compounding effect of the aging population is yada yada and so and so forth. You need lots of ammunition.

How I solve this problem is blah blah...

From there on you can devise all sorts of aids and calculators which numerically demonstrate the extent of the problem or the value the solution. Right now, you're like a doctor, you are in the business of diagnosis. You need to screen and find people who need you. It's called qualifying a prospect.

In your case, you could devise a predictive calculator which would show how many years people lose on average for having a poor diet, or how changing the percentage composition of the diet can add years to their life, or have a diagnosis survey which identifies whether people are at risk of diet related health problems.

You'd put this on a blog, start mailing surveys, getting in guest commentators, running an AdWords campaign and basically building an evidentiary case for your business, which you'll then leverage to get x, y, z.

And so and so on...have fun doing problem definitions and when you're done you can post it here.

[Bored]

In my business class we are writing business plans in the comming week for a "make believe" business. I will use my idea as the business and maybe that will help me write the essay you said I should write.

[akula]

Originally Posted by Bored

In my business class we are writing business plans in the comming week for a "make believe" business. I will use my idea as the business and maybe that will help me write the essay you said I should write.

Good. Keep in mind the law of the big P.

Founders attempt to solve all kinds of problems.

Some are really small and specific- Not enough computers in your school solved by organising a fundraiser for your school. Only a small number of people experience this problem.

Some are big and general problems- finding information- solved by writing a search engine. Problem experienced by a lot of people but in very different ways.

Some are big and very specific problems. Too much mail in my inbox- solved by ClearContext email prioritisation software.

The bad ones are solutions without problems. I have no problem feeding my dog - unfortunately there was Pets.com.

Try to avoid solutions which are searching for problems- try to find very very, extremely specific problems (e.g. cluttered email inbox) that you feel are important enough for you to dedicate your time to. This is the hardest thing there is in foundership.

Now here is the kicker....

The value of your business is going to be defined (amongst other things) by how well you formulate and communicate the problem you are solving. In your case:

Bad Formulation- I am trying to solve the problem of obesity and premature death.

This formulation will get you nowhere. It's way too broad and means way too many thing to way too many people. Start a business with this premise and you'll be in trouble.

Good Formulation- Every year 1 million, forty five year old white males living in US, die from heart attacks because they eat McDonalds, smoke Malbaro cigarettes and watch Fox . My pill stops that happening.

Notice that the problem described has remained the same. It's that in the second example it is very specific. I could have said that people get heart attacks from a bad diet, smoking and failing to exercise. But that's too broad. Asking somebody if they fail to exercise will get you blank stares. Asking somebody if they watch Fox, then how often they watch it, for how many hours and how that compares to how much time they spend exercising begins to highlight the problem you are solving to the prospect you are talking with.

Practically speaking: A commercial asking people who don't exercise to call some 1800 number is not going to get a response. A commercial asking all people who watch more than 20 hours of TV a day or eat more than 5 BigMacs a week, to sms some number to learn more about what happens to people who do that- will get you customers.

Take what ever problem you are concerned about and narrow it's definition to as many variables as possible. Not just the sex of the person, but everything from where they live, what car they drive, what movies they watch, absolutely as many variables as you can get your hands on. If you can do that, you will have done proper problem formulation.

Good luck

[Bored]

Hey thanks for the information.

Do you have some sort of instant messaging program we can keep in touch with?

[akula]

Originally Posted by Bored

Hey thanks for the information.

Do you have some sort of instant messaging program we can keep in touch with?

nope. not necessary.