Comments on: The Blindfolded Entrepreneur: Should You Start a Company Without Functional Industry Knowledge?

By: oldguy

oldguy — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 21:28:06 +0000

I started a business in a field I knew nothing about. It worked out, but I’ll never do it again. I made mistakes that should have put me out of business. While I did have insights into what could be done that escaped the regulars in the field, I couldn’t really even begin to implement them until after I had made the long, hard slog up the learning curve.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 22:54:52 +0000

Some may have survived business at the first step, but without any knowledge or experience they will not hold up for long. The world of business is like a sea full of sharks. Going empty handed is like swimming in open sea. But if we get knowledge and experience first, it will be like in a huge boat.

By: Lord

Lord — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 19:43:31 +0000

The greatest opportunities are never in what you know or in what others know but in what is unknown. To be able to take advantage of that, you need to know some things, and need to find out what others know, but it is recognition of what is not known and seeing how to use that that produces success.

By: Ellen

Ellen — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 15:16:13 +0000

I think that a certain amount of experience is necessary to start up a business. It may be possible to succeed in the business world without experience, but it’s a bit risky to pursue.

By: laurence haughton

laurence haughton — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 00:46:57 +0000

This author “leaps” to conclusions that aren’t supported by facts.
For example he writes that “it [not knowing the industry] ensured they worked hard to learn and listen to others.” Both are good qualities that lead to success. But who did they listen to? Nowhere does he say that these “others” were also completely naive to the competencies and complexities of the business. (Can you imagine the result of listening to people who know nothing?) How does it follow that “This goes against classic western business management theory of driving business by core competence.”

There’s more of the same in the link. Yuck.

By: Patrick

Patrick — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 22:53:08 +0000

I usually feel a bit guilty when I don’t know everything about what I’m doing. One of the main services my company provides is web development. I do keep up with the industry and keep a keen lookout for trends but I am human and learned I can’t know it all. In the beginning I was doing a lot myself for a very small number of people on a part-time basis. later I discovered my wife who is very detailed oriented was better at coding than I was and she has taken up the majority of the coding work. My passion is on the design end. Later the both of us reached a saturation point of working and marketing and decided to bring in others to help us. It’s very important to know your industry but not nearly as important as it is to know how to “get the job done.”

They are a few projects we are all working on in our company that we are having to learn as we go but these are ideas were are working on to compete with our customers and stay ahead of them and also to look a bit ahead of where are clients are and where they will be in the months and years ahead.

By: asg

asg — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 22:45:55 +0000

I think the network of contacts is key — it may be that in India, networking and family connections are a far larger part of what senior businesspeople do, and as a result they always have a friend or a cousin they can contact in almost any industry. (Certainly my father, who is Indian and a businessman here in the U.S., would agree.) Networking and contacts are so critical to entrepreneurship that this kind of “built-in” networking ethic may mean entrepreneurs can start businesses in industries with which they’re unfamiliar much more easily.