How to get started?

Many people have entrepreneurial dreams. But starting a business just seems to be a rather mysterious process, especially for those who have yet started. There are roadblocks, inertia, fear of the unknown and failure. Maybe out of a million people with ideas, only half a million actually start a business, and probably only 10% of these group actually survive the first year. Then again, I have witnessed how some of my friends have succeeded and become multi-millionaire at age less than 30.

I spoke to my mentor Mr Yeo Keng Joon lately. He is an active NUS MBA Alumni and has his own business. According to him, starting out on his own was not a difficult decision. He was versed in the industry due to his previous job. He knew what the market needed and he just aimed to do it better. His advice to me was not to jump into starting a business, but keep my eyes open to opportunities.

Sometimes I wonder what it takes to even take the first step. I have heard a funny analogy.. "Instead of jumping into a swimming pool full of water, what don't we just go into an empty swimming pool and fill the swimming pool with water over time?" It is the same debate on whether one should build experience first or just start a business straight after school. Entrepreneurs would need the right attitude to be prepared to fail and persevere through the hard times. It is the process and experience that matters. It helps that the business is build around what you know so that less resources is needed to acquire the knowledge, eliminating consultants and outside assistance.

In both a casual conversation with Mr Lim Ker Han, director of a chain of beauty salons in Singapore, and a talk by Mr Allan Lim from Nestle,  I understood the importance of the ability to make pitches. The ability to effectively communicate ideas to relevant stakeholders (management, customers, suppliers, investors) is an important skill to have. Every startup team would need someone who can pitch amazingly well.

There is this thing called the Sweat Equity, which is an accumulative value of the business that was build upon from days of hard work. Far more important than money is the investment of time to make sometime meaningful. An example was how Brett Kelly wrote a guide for Evernote software with the aim to take $10,000 over a year. But ended up making more than $100,000.

Recently, I went through a simple process of "Ideation to Validation" with 2 of my MBA friends. We came up with the idea called Journey Pal to target daily commuters who will be delighted to have an auto-notification for bus/train arrival times. We turned a general idea into a specific idea by narrowing the scope of who is likely going to use the app and how revenue could be made. We fan out some surveys and receive more than n>30 responses, which further validated there is a need for it. Excited as we were, we pitched to SMRT personnel during a Hackathon event. However, the idea was so good that SMRT is currently doing it in-house and is undergoing a beta-testing phase. Well, it was an interesting journey I had and I believe such process will be iterated many times in our quest to start a business.

There is this video which I would like to share and remind myself not to get fixated about getting the best idea and keeping it secretive. Some key pointers:
1) Ideas don't matter. Execution does.
2) Share you ideas to gain valuable feedback and create a social contract that holds you accountable.
3) Put yourself in a position where you feel as much pressure as possible by telling as many people as you can about your ideas.
4) Can I do something meaningfully different or better than others?

The Fallacy of the "Good Idea": Ideation - How to Start A Business