Setting up own business - Thoughts

[Johnny20270]

i assume many guys here have set up their own business. I have been reading a lot of sucess stories about it recently and just wondered what you chaps have learnt from your experience. Naturally there are plenty stories whereby they failed too!

The crucial concept to me is generation of the idea.

Its something I would like to explore and as redundancy is envitable where i work, its seems like a good time to at least research.

 

[Johnny20270]

mrBell: thats kindof a foolish statement tbh

My question is to gauge the thoughts of those experienced in this area, not run off like a headless chicken. Nor am I am not looking for someone to give me an idea. Far from it! Some get plain lucky by just thinking of a concept and essentially get bought out before the idea comes to fruition, but I daresay the majority comes from hard and intelligent work.

My question is more based on the lessons learnt from people who have actually done it before and what lessons they learnt at it, i.e. their testimonials. I reading about successful start-ups there seems to a lot of commonality in their wisdom. Such as:

- don’t underestimate marketing
- don't ignoring advice from experienced entrepreneurs - Hence the post
- confusing a good idea with a profitable business
- resisting technology

And so on …

I am well experienced in business but in large multi-national corporations, Exxon-Mobile, Investment Banking etc and this is nothing like a small enterprise of course. To market and set up financial products we hire teams of lawyers, regulation specialists, IT gurus, and large marketing department. Naturally this is not feasible for a one man band. We only deal with sums of 10m and above

I am well educated and I work at specialist finance and the amount of people I have seem over the years looking to make a fast buck in finance because they have watched “the wolf of wall street” or some other movie is simply amazing or look for patterns in pricing and think the concept of risk “not being a p#ssy”.

However I am not naive enough to think I can do it better than everyone else. I always admire the young graduate who can make a great success of himself with seemly no business knowledge nor life experience. They have done well and good luck to them. I personally think a lot of my educated colleagues often pour scorn on enterprising people because they have “not served their time” so-to-write and often put it down to this jealous sentiment of “they just got lucky”.

 

[Johnny20270]

Abbotsmike:
yes you're correct. I dislike that term entrepreneurs, I am more referring to sensible people who have planned their business and progress through the stages, not those cocky Muppets you see coming in to dragons dens on a half-baked idea with no research and get hammered for it 

Mynight: yes I have the capital (within reason) and interest so no problem there, but want to do my due diligence

As for my skill: background, structural engineer, then c++ programmer for scientific software and last 10 years technical financial specialist. Whilst there maybe avenues of doing something in my line such as financial software as knowledge is crucial it’s a very expensive and competitive industry to get involved, and has become highly regulated so definitely too risky. Time to research a potential career opportunities

 

[Johnny20270]

as above but no one is going to give you the golden goose



but the best business to be in is one where you have no physical stock and sell other peoples services at a increased rate taking a commission for doing nothing more than hosting a site/taking a phone call

Indeed, a sucessful way for creating a platform to connect buyers with sellers for something the genuinely want, like ebay. The golden ticket

 

[Johnny20270]

Depends entirely on what you will be doing. Sounds like you are thinking up a new idea or product? That is very risky so would want to get it started whilst still working for someone. If it is providing a service, then that is less risky, assuming you have the experience and some business sense.



Yeah, should be living off the state instead.

yeah its providing a service. I am just mulling over it. Not giving up my day job but redundancy is looming where I work so might be an opportune time to at least have a solid crack at it. Overheads are pretty low, just more hard work and lack of salary, but I do that for a while. I know several people who tried many start-ups before and never really 'made it'. Just earned a basic living with a lot less security compared to the 9-5ver

Also, its related to Fuggan's thread, "I can't work in an office for the next 50 years... ". I know his feeling! I am 40 and being working for someone else all my life. I, like a lot of the population, am sick of it. I always think that one should take a chance, whether that is with life, travelling, careers, partners etc. By change I mean 'measured risk'

 

[Johnny20270]

hi guys, sorry I must enable email notifications for threads!

randomshenans: Actually I agree (or maybe disagree if I miss-understood your point) . I think many great business have start just from an idea. I have seem that a lot in my career. However I believe it is the proper execution of the idea that is crucial.

I am thinking of creating a website to facilitate a large group of people X to get a service form a large group of people Y. I apologies as I don't want to be too specific just yet

I have a few ideas but as I start to flesh them out they begin to fall apart mainly for 2 reasons

(1) someone else has done it successfully and its very hard to break into it because the first few in have it sown up (e.g. right move / zoopla), or market is just too competitive
, e.g. on-line selling

(2) sound business idea but working the numbers, I realistically won't make a living out of it. (For example building PC's which I am sure 1000's of people have thought about)

Also some aspects like, target market, realistic potential market, target profits, advertising costs need to be taken into account but problem with a software type of idea is that, anyone can just come in and copy your idea quick and fast.

There are other ideas which I think is more sound but the initial capital out lay is just too much of a risk. For example I regularly go to china and I see the Chinese are getting obsessed with European type goods and services. The really want for example German made kitchen appliances and while they can just buy these off a website, not many people are selling the equivalent of the 'John lewis expert service', by western people. There is definitely a market there but only for the big boys.