Have you ever wondered about starting a company or a startup? Maybe just a project you are passionate about?
A while ago I decided to try out Skillshare service and to my surprise, Guy Kawasaki had published two courses - Art of the Start: Turning Ideas into High-Growth Businesses and Art of Growth: Sustainably Scale Your Business. This blog post is about Art of the Start: Turning Ideas into High-Growth Businesses and you can find here the main ideas. Let’s start then!
Instead of putting statements, focus on the right questions:
1. If my company did not exist, why would the world not be as good place?
2. Why don’t we do it, why don’t we try it?
3. …, therefore… What if? E.g. Smartphones are getting more powerful, therefore are capable of heavy computing. What if we create …
4. What is your mantra? (4 words) Why should your company exist? E.g. Forgetting sucks (Evernote)
5. Are you petrified to be crappy?
6. What has to be done to be on the market as fast as possible and learn?
7. What are the critical milestones?
8. How do you connect emotionally with your clients, what is your story?
9. Embrace positive feedback, don’t try to satisfy everyone.
10. What is your pre-mortem?
11. Is venture capital funding right for your business?
12. How do you allocate founder’s stock? (equally? but do all contribute equally?)
13. How do you protect your intellectual property, and are regulatory compliant?
14. Do you have complementary skills in the team?
15. Do you have a deep commercial/economical understanding?
16. Do you have valuable connections, are you known on the market?
17. What is your ultimate pitch, are you prepared?
18. 10 slides - 20 minutes - 30 font size
19. The best pitch - pure demo pitch
20. How to utilize social media for your purpose?
I heard about Guy Kawasaki long time ago and got a copy of his book in my Kindle reader. Unfortunately, I was putting it back too many times and the reading progress is about 5%. Unbelievable… I am so glad I found Guy’s courses on Skillshare :)