Start a StartUp / Blog

Coming up with a name can be a time consuming process.

If you manage to go through a few names on Techcrunch, like The Name Inspector did you will find a few patterns:

1. Real Words: Amazon, Apple, Sphere
2. Compounds: CircleSource, Firefox, Wordpress
3. Phrases: StartaStarUp, AllofMP3, MyBlogLog, StumbleUpon
4. Blends: Microsoft (microcomputer + software), Technorati (technology + literati), Wikipedia (wiki + encyclopedia)
5. Tweaked words: ebay, edgeio, iPhone
6. Affixed words: CoComment, Findory, Napster
7. Made up or obscure origin: Bebo, Meebo, Odeo
8. Puns: Farecast (forecast, fore –> fare), Farecast (forecast, fore –> fare)
9. People’s names: Orkut, Ziya, Ning
10. Initials and Acronyms: AOL, ATT, GM

Hope this helps.

StartUps change a lot and they change fast. They rarely look like how they started as they adapt in the business jungle. So is there a point to writing a business plan?

VC Sean Wise offers five reasons to write a business plan:

1. Creates a common starting point.
2. Sets the goals and shares your vision.
3. Sets the path and identifies required resources.
4. Forces analysis.
5. Creates confidence.

In short, the answer is that the business plan itself is not that useful. But the process of writing it helps you think about all the things that can go wrong and plan accordingly. Its a good starting point but don’t stop yourself from changing it radically as you go.

How to Start:

A previous post discusses the process of writing a business plan. I found a couple of good ones since then.
Bill Reichert , another VC has a nice article on the how-tos of writing a business plan.
John Newton has another good one.

Start today and fill the blanks.

Writing a cohesive business plan that explains your idea to someone else is an artform in itself. A few questions to ask your self are:

# What’s your business idea?
# How does your idea address a need?
# What model suits you best?
# What’s so different about what you offer?
# How big is the market and how big will you grow?
# What’s your role going to be?
# Who’s on your team?
# How will customers buy from you, and how much will they pay?
# Where’s the startup money coming from?
# How will you measure success?
# What are your key milestones?

Startup nation has more: http://www.startupnation.com/pages/start/Step3.asp

, originally uploaded by .

“The biggest problem with doing anything entrepreneurial is getting started.”

Procrastination is the bane of man kind. Offers a few tips to getting disciplined.

Start slowly: Pick the smallest task that you can do to get started and do it. That’s it the rest will follow.

Prioritize: Just listing the things to do and prioritizing them is enough to get started. A tiny list all that is needed to start.

Short plan: Make a short plan for the near future. In the next 5 mins, in the next 1 hour, etc and accomplish it.

Talk: Tell as many people/friends as possible about your idea in writing (blog/email/letter) and give them a tentative deadline.

Community: Be around people who are doing entrepreneurial. Subscribe to their blogs. Attend local small business meetings. Buy entrepreneurial magazines line Business 2.0.

Place: Find the right place to work. Good ambiance. No distractions. Comfortable.Attitude: Stay around motivate people. Accept setbacks well and think about contingency plans. The Steve Jobs speech at Stanford is a great place to start.

Click here: (Shameless plug) Click on the link, fill in the details and click on submit. We will do the rest. Also subscribe to this blog, poke posts are on their way to motivate you to start.

The one thing you must do is, talk to as many people as possible about your idea. Talk, talk, talk. Talking is cheap. You will get lots of good and bad feedback. Filter it and adjust accordingly. Wait for the right time and leap.

The best way to talk is to start your own blog, plug-in to the community that you will be catering to and think your idea out loud. Don’t fret over someone copying the idea. Finding problems fast and solving them well is what ultimately matters.

The business pundit has 10 more things to do before you startup.

Sk8 Silueta, originally uploaded by EPIDEMIA_.

Tim O’Reilly has an excellent speech on three things that kick started his company. All the three boil down to one core principle. Predictions are very difficult. IBM couldn’t predict the software revolution. Microsoft couldn’t predict the importance of Search. Google won’t be able to predict the next big thing.

Planning a big master plan and implementing it is impossible. The only thing that works is, finding problems fast and solving them well. Agility! Grand plans are good. But implementing those with your head in the sand is a recipe for failure. Grand plans can be agile too if you have a small team and less things to change.

Onstartups by Dharmesh Shah has some really good practical advice for startups. He recently asked if Less is really what it is made up to be.
On another note, Kathy Sierra says “Don’t give in to User Demands“. I understand her point, but don’t think categorizing comments by user type or paying for feedback is the right way to solve this problem.

I have an article posted that deals with exactly the same topics. Is less really good for you?

Define: Moonlighting - To work at another job, often at night, in addition to one’s full-time job.

Define: Intrapreneur - A person within a large corporation who takes direct responsibility for turning an idea into a profitable finished product through assertive risk-taking and innovation.

Eric Schonfeld of Business 2.0, editor-at-large, has post collecting How-Tos on starting a StartUp with out quitting your day job. An excellent read. Lots for great tips.

I absolute-diddly-doodly love Flickr. A Flickr picture a day keeps you blogging away.

Water drops: fragile and beautiful, just like a StartUp.

I have been waiting to do this for a long time: Start blogging again! So here it is, I’ve done it. I’ve started blogging again after two and a half years! Yay. Feels great.