Somebody Stole My Idea
By Tim Berry
How do you feel when somebody steals your idea? It’s a frequently asked question. Here’s my answer. That happened to me once. A business associate listened to my idea that I shouldn’t have shared in a cocktail party setting, and he went quietly off and executed. I was annoyed because he didn’t invite me to... Read More »
How Do I Start my Business With No Money?
By Tim Berry
(Note: consider this one a guest post from Paul O’Brien, CEO of MediaTech Ventures. It’s his answer to a Quora question “how much money do I need to start.” It’s adopted from his post What is the minimum capital required to start up a new tech company? | SEO’Brien) How much do you need to... Read More »
How Investors Look at Startup Forecasts
By Tim Berry
Investors look at startup forecasts for concepts, not accuracy. When investors look at your projections, they are looking not for just the numbers, but essential insight into the knowledge, experience, and goals of the founders. Important: you need to forecast to manage your business. Hard as it is to forecast, it’s much harder to run... Read More »
Where Can I Sell My Business Ideas?
By Tim Berry
I get it. What a nice dream … just sell the business idea, and let somebody else take the risk, find the money, and do the work. Except that the work, the risk, and the money is what gives the business idea value. So nowhere. The answer to your question about where is: nowhere. Business... Read More »
Some Posts on Managing During a Crisis
By Tim Berry
I've been posting on the main bplans blog during the pandemic crisis. Here are six recent posts. Several focus on the economic crisis. Read More »
Do those summaries, sure. Use those frameworks. But don’t think they replace business planning.
By Tim Berry
There is some bad advice floating around in the startup world. Useful as the Lean Canvas is, and despite some well-intentioned suggestions of summaries, those are not business plans. They don’t deal with the drivers and components of cash flow. They don’t set milestones, metrics, and tracking. You can’t run a business with them. And... Read More »
Know Your Industry: Average Margins
By Tim Berry
Know your industry. In a recent post here, I wrote that the most common stumbling point I see in multiple business plans is absurdly unrealistic profitability. Specifically … Most of the business plans I see project profits too high, or profits too early. In the real world, startups choose growth or profits, not both. The... Read More »
10 Tips on How to Protect a Software Idea
By Tim Berry
How to protect a software idea? I recently answered a related Quora question on this one. I took parts of this post from a previous post on how to protect an idea while building a business, but this one focuses more on software, specifically. That’s where I’ve spent most of my career, and still my... Read More »
