Successful Startup 101 Magazine - Veteran's Issue 2014

by Tabitha Naylor

  64.  You can also go deeper by tracking registered patents. Innovative products are constantly being protected.

  65. The key to problem spotting is to capture a long list of problems before you start considering possible solutions.

  66. Take a service or approach applied to one market, and apply it to another. Cotap is the Whatsapp for business.

  67. Take a task that seems tedious and currently requires humans and automate it.

  69.  Ask yourself if it’s a product you will personally use.

  70. Take a single category out of the many offered by tech giants like eBay or Amazon and make it a simple niche business.

  71. Pair up people who don’t normally work together and give them room for brainstorm.

  72. The big guys leave a tremendous amount of opportunity on the table. Look for that niche.

  73. Think about your skills and whether they might be useful in a new area.

  74. Find a category lacking recent innovations. Identify markets that haven’t had many recent innovations.

  75. Talk to buyers in a niche and consider sending an online survey to potential customers to learn about their needs and interests.

  76.  Look into how entrepreneurs are combining social networking with the growing interest in mobile apps.

  77. Commit time to specific observation sessions where you stimulate your brain into thinking differently.

  78. Surf the Web differently. Search for terms in other industries. Read on creative thinking.

  79. Always be curious and never stop looking for answers.

  80. Don’t do things better; do things differently.

  About the Author

  Thomas Oppong is the founder @Alltopstartups. You can reach him at thomas at alltopstartups dot com. Connect with him on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and Instagram

  Leave The Nest To Start Your Company? 8 Signs You're Ready

  By Marla Tabaka

  So, you have a great idea for a business. You believe in it with all your heart. (On your better days anyway.) Furthermore, you are really tired of the 8-to-6 grind. (Hey, didn't that used to be 9-5?) On some days you are absolutely certain that it's time to follow your dream and take the plunge into entrepreneurialism. But on other days the doubt, and yes, even the fear, are enough to make you pack your lunch and trek off to another day on the J-O-B.

  Sound familiar? So, what are these doubts and fears really all about? Do other people feel like this? Sure they do; you are definitely not alone.

  Some of the most common uncertainties that keep the would-be entrepreneur bound to his commitments in corporate America relate to the potential loss of financial security, fear of failure, fear of success (yes, you read that right), and lack of emotional support. Frankly, if you want guarantees, it's probably a good sign that you are risk-adverse...and perhaps not cut out to be an entrepreneur. But if you are close to making a decision between the security and familiarity of your day job and depths of the unknown in the world of small business, this may be the check-list you've been waiting for.

  In his role as a top-level executive, Paddy Spence has helped numerous emerging brands leverage their success in specialty channels, and successfully cross over into mainstream markets. During his 18 years of executive management experience in the natural and organic consumer packaged goods industry, Spence was vice president of marketing at Kashi and created one the natural industry's first market research firms. Today, he leads the way in his own company as the Chairman and CEO of Zevia, a line of zero-calorie sodas sweetened with the natural sweetener stevia.

  Spence knows firsthand what it is like to make a choice between an existing job and launching a business. "It's important to be aware of what appeals to you most when you make this decision; whether it's the idea of managing a business or building a business," says Spence. "For me, the excitement came when I had the opportunity to build something based on a cause that is significant to me."

  So with his knowledge of the natural foods market and his personal mission to reduce the quantity of artificial products and sweeteners that people are consuming, Spence set out to build something new. Is it time for you to do the same? Let's take a look at what he cites as the main differences between his new role as a CEO.

  "Building a business requires an ongoing level of sustained passion that managing and maintaining a business from a corporate position requires less of," Spence says. "To be an entrepreneur you need to have a tolerance for immense risk and the ability to wear a lot of hats. Inherently in a smaller, emerging enterprise you will be called upon to do the mundane and unexpected. Your bandwidth in terms of functional skills will be stretched much more. So if you want to be a specialist in one thing only, then managing a business via your corporate job is probably what you're built for."

  So aside from recognizing whether or not you have entrepreneurial passion and ability running through your veins, what should you have in place before saying goodbye to your comfy corporate cushion? Paddy Spence offers some sage advice.

  WATCH FOR THE SIGNS: Spence began waking up in the morning thinking about that day's to do list rather than the next three months—or three years. This increasing short-term focus, along with feeling that work-thoughts were an intrusion when he wasn't at work, were both signs to Spence that he was ready to leave his job. He felt that he was maintaining something in his job rather than building something new and exciting. "When I realized that there was an opportunity to jump into a product category that 96 percent of Americans already purchased; that no one had used stevia as a sweetener across an entire soda portfolio before; and that I was already a huge fan of its all-natural sweetening ingredient," says Spence, "I knew it was a perfect match for me!"

  START WITH PASSION: Remember, what defines an entrepreneur is to go beyond thinking about it, ignore the calculated risks and do it.

  BELIEVE IN IT: Define a product, segment, or category that you really believe in and combine it with a business opportunity in that segment. This creates a fertile business opportunity. Stevia is a personal passion for Spence. Because of it he is able to live a completely sugar-free life; as an athlete, that's important to him. Spence took that passion and married it up with a business opportunity; a void in the marketplace. Stevia is a great sweetener and no one was maximizing its full potential—until now.

  KNOW YOUR PLAYERS: Spence had a close-knit team of people with whom he'd worked throughout his career. There was a level of trust and camaraderie that eliminated a lot of the risk for him. "Personal chemistry is just as important as the written track record of an individual," he says. "It's great if you've done a lot on paper but I've never worked with you I don't know if we are going to have a strong work chemistry."

  HAVE A PLAN: careful financial planning is critical right up front. "All emerging businesses need capital to grow," says Spence. "Understanding those capital needs and how achieve them is important going into it, as opposed to trying to figure it out as you go along."

  DO YOUR MARKET RESEARCH: Test and learn. Try things on a small scale. Begin with friends and family and get their input on what they think of your product or service. From there you can go on to larger control tests where you will identify measurable quantitative results and actionable changes you might make in your product offering. "The larger your sample size the more you eliminate bias," Spence says. "Start out with a small group and expand it to get feedback from hundreds or thousands." Today, our customers and retailers, such as Whole Foods, Target, and Kroger, are our test groups.

  HIRE A GREAT PR TEAM: Spence suggests looking for a firm that has been there before, knows how the bigger companies do it, who the players are, how to leverage opportunities, and how to identify areas where you can improve over your competition. Find PR people who share a passion for your product and can communicate your brand's message naturally.

  KEEP YOUR BRANDING SIMPLE: "You need to be able to tell the story of brand or product without it being a complicated story," Spence
reminds us. "For us, our consumer value proposition is incredibly simple: Zevia has zero calories and no artificial sweeteners, it's all natural. So when I tell people it tastes great, has no calories, it’s all natural and it cost a dollar, that’s a pretty easy sell!"

  One of my favorite tidbits from this interview with Paddy Spence is this important reminder: "You are going to learn from your experiences; both good and bad experiences. Regardless of what happens in an entrepreneurial or emerging brand situation, you are going to come out of that experience with more knowledge than when you entered. New risk doesn't make you dumber it makes you more experienced. If you have to go back to the corporate arena, you will be a more valuable employee than when you left."

  About The Author

  MARLA TABAKA is a small-business adviser who helps entrepreneurs around the globe grow their businesses well into the millions. She speaks widely on combining strategic and creative thinking for optimum success and happiness. Connect with her @MarlaTabaka and www.inc.com/author/marla-tabaka.

  *This article was originally published here

  Do You Have What It Takes to Start Your Own Business?

  By Rieva Lesonsky

  What qualities do successful small business owners have in common? A new survey by Deluxe Corp. sought to find out by asking entrepreneurs about their history, attitudes and characteristics that led to business success. How do you measure up? According to Deluxe:

  Small business owners are optimists. You’ll deal with lots of setbacks and obstacles in your road to business success, so you need to have a positive outlook. In the Deluxe survey, a whopping 86 percent of respondents believe they can do anything they set their minds to.

  Small business owners are comfortable with failure. The road to business success is paved with failures, but that’s OK for entrepreneurs in the study. More than three-fourths (77 percent) say they would rather learn from failure than never try at all.

  Small business owners keep it all in the family. Having family members who have run businesses is a common thread among successful small business owners. Whether it’s learning the ropes of business success at an early age or simply being exposed to the realities of entrepreneurship that makes the difference, more than three-fourths (76 percent) of small business owners Deluxe polled have a family member who owned a small business.

  Small business owners like to be in charge. More than half (54 percent) of entrepreneurs in the survey say they started their companies because they wanted to work for themselves instead of having a boss. A majority (89 percent) described themselves as leaders.

  Small business owners like to get things done. You may be dreaming about starting a business, but for business success, you need to take the next step. Seventy-eight percent of entrepreneurs in the survey describe themselves as doers and 80 percent say they’re practical (80 percent).

  Of course, not all small business owners are the same, and there are many reasons to start a business. Deluxe found the small business owners in the study fell into one of seven categories:

  1. All Heart: These entrepreneurs started a business to do what they love and share it with others.

  2. Encore Career: These entrepreneurs are older, entering a second phase of their careers, and took a risk with starting their own businesses.

  3. Passionately Confident: These risk-takers are born business owners who believe in  choosing their own paths in life.

  4. All in the Family: Traditional types, these entrepreneurs inherited the family business.

  5. My Way: These entrepreneurs were motivated by taking back control of their time. They started their companies to gain control over their schedules and hours. (They’re more likely to be women).

  6. Mastering the Niche: What we think of as the classic entrepreneur, these business owners saw an opportunity and wanted to capitalize on it.

  7. Boss-me-not: These former business professionals left their for-profit, corporate jobs because they wanted to be their own bosses.

  Isn’t it good to know that, whichever category you fall into, you can make a go of your business?

  About Rieva Lesonsky

  Rieva Lesonsky is CEO of GrowBiz Media, a media and custom content company focusing on small business and entrepreneurship. Email Rieva at rieva@smallbizdaily.com, follow her on Google+ and Twitter @Rieva, and visit her website SmallBizDaily.com to get the scoop on business trends and sign up for Rieva’s free TrendCast reports.  

  * This article originally appeared here.

  Why Startups Hire Their Own Lawyers

  By Daniel Doktori

  Airbnb challenged local hotel zoning laws, Uber took on taxi licensing requirements, and Pinterest built a business around posting copyrighted images. Startup companies that simply follow the rules risk getting left behind. The right lawyer can mean the difference between pushing the envelope and breaking the law. Many startups struggle to decide whether and when to hire a lawyer and how to make the most of their in-house attorney once they do.

  I asked several prominent General Counsels of tech companies (and one VC fund) about their work and about how their companies approached the decision to hire them. Here’s what they said.

  “Being general counsel is like being Tom Hagen in the Godfather – you’re a Consigliere,” the top lawyer at a New York City startup recently explained. But to achieve that kind of trust, “you need to understand where the founders are coming from – the sacrifices they had to go through to build their business.” Startup companies hire for “fit” into a company culture that celebrates and demands risk-taking – a quality not typically associated with lawyers. So when startup CEOs recruit their first in-house attorney, they look for someone who can replace “no, because,” with “yes, if.”

  Why Do Startups Hire Their Own Lawyers? “Lawyers are not engineers. They don’t reliably produce products on a daily basis, but instead provide a strategic, long-term value proposition focused on smart growth and risk-management,” explained one Startup General Counsel (GC).

  A typical assignment for a startup GC arises when a business idea confronts the question: how can we do this legally? The answer generally falls into one of several categories: how to protect intellectual property; how to hire, fire, and compensate employees; how to hold regular board meetings and ensure company officials honor their duties to shareholders; how to advertise in compliance with federal rules; how to enter into agreements to partner with other companies; how to maintain user privacy; how to sell things online; how to respond to government requests for user data.

  GCs pride themselves on their ability to “get smart fast” on legal issues facing the company (it helps that they no longer get paid by the hour). When getting smart fast is either not smart enough or not fast enough, the general counsel acts as a savvy procurer of legal services by knowing which lawyer to hire for what and how much to pay.

  As one explains, “I ask myself, ‘can we stage the legal costs?’” Another adds, “I come in with some very basic questions and I say, ‘for the love of god, don’t write me a memo. Let’s contain the legal costs to X.’ Then it’s lather, rinse, repeat. I do some more research and see if I need more from outside counsel after that.”

  When Do Startups Hire Their First Lawyer? Conventional wisdom indicates that a startup’s first lawyer will have had four to 10 years of experience in a broad-based corporate practice, preferably one where the clients were themselves startup companies. Less conventional wisdom exists on the subject of when a startup company should hire that first in-house lawyer. Some startups look for a cost-benefit threshold of legal bills (about $300,000) that can be managed by bringing someone in house. Some see company size as the relevant metric, with one GC asserting that once a company has 10 employees, it should be hiring a full-time operations person to handle Chief Operating Officer duties (often times a lawyer who is not referred to as solely “general counsel”).

  How do Startup General Counsels Work? At a startup company, speed counts. Driven by an ethos of
“trust but verify,” many Startup GCs stress the importance of following their instincts. “You can say what you think and then go back and check. Things are moving fast, so the mostly right answer today is better than the perfect answer tomorrow.”

  As a result, the single most important tool for a successful startup general counsel is a big rolodex. “Google is great. Friends are better,” quipped one GC, but Google remains first stop in the standard three step process of “Internet research,” “outreach to the legal network,” “hire outside counsel.”

  As one startup lawyer puts it, “I’ve come to realize that every answer in the world is out there [on the Internet]. The decision is whether or not to spend the time finding it.” Internet research is important in priming the set of questions to ask one’s colleagues, because they have other priorities as well. “You need to pick your spots” when asking colleagues for help. One way to pick more spots is to grow your network. One General Counsel created a group of local general counsels upon being thrown into a job which seemed overwhelming at first. “I said let’s share information – you go first!” Another General Counsel joined the local State Bar Association’s corporate counsel group. “I now have buddies around town.”

  A good startup general counsel has a keen grasp of what former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld termed the “known knowns,” “the known unknowns,” and the “unknown unknowns.” Generally, all litigation is farmed out. Further, a general counsel may seek insight from outside counsel in case of lack of experience, or lack of time. Sometimes, it’s a lack of stomach for the attendant risk: “We’re not taking any heavy actions without getting ‘adult supervision.’”