Some interesting recent entrepreneurship links…
Jeff Cornwall gives his definition of the word.
Barry Moltz gives us ten rules he teaches his entrepreneurship class. The first two…
1. Every Business is About Solving Pain.
Find the People that will Pay For It.
2. Ideas are Meaningless.
Many Think It, Few Actually Do It.
…are the ones people most often forget.
And in response to Barry's post comes the top ten signs that your startups is doomed.
Back in my start-up days, my partners and I pitched a service that was technollgically complex and aimed at a huge market that almost no one knew existed. We met with more than 100 VC and CRGs (Certified Rich Guys) looking for money.
As we went along, our presentation evolved, finally settling-in on a whiteboard (PowerPoint is for punks) drawing of workflow in our target market, with big red arrows aimed at points of pain that our service eliminated.
Almost no one we pitched to — including most of our investors — ever really understood our technology or the business model we were proposing. What they understood was pain. Every business has aspects that are painful, so everyone can relate to the painful aspects of other people’s businesses.
We raised our money by creating a kind of empathy: Pain is pain, no matter what the business. Once we did that, all we had to do was prove the scale of the market and fill in the paperwork.
Those first two rules should be the new golden rules for entrepreneurs, or peacepreneurs like me (I make peace work for a living).
For years I’ve devoted my professional life as an Ombuds to helping people be proactive in resolving work issues. No matter how many benefits I offer business owners will not engage until THE PAIN starts! Not even the chance to reduce litigation exposure by having a company mediator does the trick.
Pain does. No one wants to feel that dread and frustration of being the leader of a very conflicted team. It works.
The second rule is golden because it is just so true. Woody Allen was right, of course. 99% of success is simply showing up…again and again and again.
Over the years I’ve given away so many, many ideas for how to grow mediation businesses that my friends think I’m crazy for creating my own competition for http://www.workwelltogether.com.
I never worry because most people won’t put in the effort. In fact, I encourage people to take ideas in my blog, http://www.mediationmensch.blogspot.com!(Besides, it’s good karma)
Thanks for sharing such a wonderful perspective!
Best,
Dina Beach Lynch, Ombuds
http://www.workwelltogether.com
Private Ombuds Services
Featured in Inc. magazine
Thanks to Felix the Cat on Flickr for the original photo of the United States Supreme Court, a modification of which appears at the top of this post.
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