What Went Wrong?

[FishBowl]

This must be a question that so many entrepreneurs ask themselves throughout their careers. Today, a new blog post went on inafishbowl.com from Fishbowl One's Matt Stockman entitled What Went Wrong.

There's so much expertise on this forum, I thought we could ponder the ways that Matt went wrong, and how many businesses fail to even get off the ground.

To give you a brief synopsis, Matt runs a band management company called Sharabang Music and, on his recent launch tour, Matt collapsed from nervous exhaustion. Having tried to make all of his (many) ideas fall into place, including using two double decker buses to hold impromptu guerilla gigs between tour gigs, Matt eventually just ran out of steam.

In his blog, he mentioned wishing he had taken on some help, got some employees who could have taken some of the strain for him. But this would have cost money. Do you guys think the cost would have been worth it?

How can you ensure your business doesn't flop before it starts, and what advice would you give to Matt and any other business which is not going too well moving forward?

[StartupSidekick]

The best advice I have learned about starting a business: Solve an important problem

So many businesses are set up without solving an actual need. You can test your business idea before proceeding too far by asking a few simple questions:

Who is my first paying customer going to be?
Where are they located?

Your family members don't count. If you can't think of exactly where your first customer is located, then you probably aren't solving an important problem. It is also not good enough to simply say that your clients are located "in offices". You need to know exactly who you will be selling to. How old are they? What do they do for a living?

In the real world, your first business idea will probably flop; but that's fine. The successful businesses adapt, and reposition their product to fill in other needs. Look at Paypal; it was founded as a way to electronically send money back and forth between 2 wireless devices. It evolved progressively into the titan that it is today. A book called 'Startups At Work' is filled with businesses that re-adapted themselves in similar fashion, before going on to great success. Perhaps Matt should have attempted a similar strategy.

Jason Sullivan
StartupSidekick (StartupSidekick) on Twitter (follow me for fresh entrepreneurial advice)
StartupSidekick | Blog, Advice & Resources for Entrepreneurs

[FishBowl]

Some great advice there - solving an important problem is certainly a great start for any business.

Understanding the target audience is also key - if you think you have something which will appeal to people, you should know who those people are.

[middeljohn]

He was trying to do too much. And if he couldn't afford any employees then he clearly didn't price for value. Most likely he was trying to be the cheapest band manager, and he paid the price.