Hello,
I just created a business. I believe that my business concept will provide value to the Information Technology & Services industry. Precisely bringing consumers and producers together therefore creating efficiency and reducing waste. I read the book Lean StartUp and I agreed that spending time trying to build a perfect plan is counter productive. As a college student, I don't have $.$$$ to pay premium service to explore whether my business will bring value and what its growth rate will be. I need help identifying cost effective (maybe freemiums) resources that will allow me to do the following:
1. Research data related to waste of goods whether at retail stores, homes, companies, etc...
2. Finding potential early adopters (shoppers who like to use coupons and other incentives)
3. Building a cost-effective MVP
Any help will greatly be appreciated.
Could also email me directly at info@leanserv.com
Answers
The point of having a business plan is to obtain capital. People do not provide capital to "businesses" that have no plan.
Capital markets are ripe at this moment for viable opportunities. There is no shortage of cash and no reason why you have to fund this out of your own pocket.
A business plan has nothing to do with being Lean. A plan will detail in writing what the opportunity is, what the expected income from sales is, what the cost of goods and services is, the target market, the path to capture that market, and many other things.
Whomever sold you on being Lean means better without a business plan doesn't know what they are talking about and could not produce any viable evidence that building a business without a plan is a good idea.
Hi John,
Thanks for your feedback. I will attempt to answer your questions therefore hopping to clarify my post:
1- What did I do to "create" a Business.
I registered a business entity with the state of Wisconsin, Obtained an EIN, purchased a domain name, build a logo, filed a patent application for the process, currently filing a Trade-Mark application, and documented types of services that my business will deliver, currently designing basic experiments (use case) to test the assumptions around value that the business will deliver. This is a non-exhaustive list of concrete actions that I have taken in "creating" my business. Please if you need additional information, feel free to contact me.
2. Have I written a Business Plan?
No, I decided to use a new methodology called "Lean Startup" as opposed to the traditional Business Plan approach. I will build a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and then run series of experiments. This experiments will allow me to test my assumptions and build a strategy from the feedback that I receive. From there, I will use the data to design a product that will quickly reach market fit. At that point, I will reach out to capital investors knowing that I will not ask more money than I need, I will preserve a lot of equity of my business, and my probability of success is greater.
For me to achieve all this, it requires finding cash. So far, all expenses are out of pocket. So that is what I mean by not having cash. I really want to be as frugal as possible by asking money when it is absolutely necessary and only taking not more than what is necessary.
I hope this helps. You can reach out to me with suggestions, questions or anything else.
Regards,
Fabien
There is plenty of capital available. I'm not sure what you mean when you say that you dont have access to capital?
Have you written a business plan that describes in detail all the moving parts of this business ?
When you say "I just created a business" what is it you mean ? What did you do to "create" a business ?
It sounds like you may be interesting in founding a company with a philosophy based upon "LEAN" Manufacturing. Perhaps, you could search this topic for possible resources on the Internet.
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