How to Protect Your Business Idea While You Build The Business
by Tim Berry
You can't build a business without sharing your idea. Here's how to protect your business idea and still share it, carefully, as needed. Read More »
The Billion-Dollar Idea Fallacy
by Tim Berry
What is wrong, you ask, with thinking your business idea is worth a billion dollars? That you have the next unicorn? Nothing. We all dream. Unless you let that interfere with reality. Read More »
How to Make Money on Your Brilliant Business Idea
by Tim Berry
So you have a brilliant business idea that will be very successful. My congratulations to you. Now read all ideas are brilliant and nobody is going to pay you for your ideas. Are you still sure? All right then, let’s continue. And – this is important – do not even think about getting investors yet. Do a... Read More »
The CBD Ingredient of Marijuana Offers New Business Opportunities
by Tim Berry
As states move toward legalized marijuana, most of the fuss so far is about pot as recreational drug, all of which has to do with the THC ingredient, the key to the marijuana high. But marijuana also contains another ingredient, CBD, which doesn’t generate a high, but may offer interesting health benefits as a happy... Read More »
Entrepreneurship and Leadership with Mark Maples
by Tim Berry
My Friday video for this week is on entrepreneurship and leadership from the Stanford Ecorner. If you haven’t been there for a while, check it out. There is a new interface, and it’s a great collection of speakers on entrepreneurship, startups, business, and investment. Here’s the intro from the site: Silicon Valley veteran Mike Maples... Read More »
A Good Idea is Like A Beautiful Day. Everybody Owns It.
by Tim Berry
My answer to this question on Quora about ideas vs. execution “ideas don’t matter, only execution matters”? – has been getting a lot of views. So I decided to repost it here. The answer to this is that millions of people – and I mean that, literally, millions of people – right now, as I write... Read More »
Startup Ideas Worth Building
by Tim Berry
(Note: I rarely do guest posts on this blog, but I ran into this answer on Quora and I am happy to post it here, as a long quote, with credit to its author. – Tim) Noam Kaiser is a professional investment manager, alias venture capitalist, or VC. The question at Quora.com was: Do you... Read More »
All Ideas are Brilliant Before They Are Executed.
by Tim Berry
“No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy.” – Helmuth von Moltke. Similarly, all business ideas are brilliant before they are executed. Ideas have to run through an obstacle course of hard realities before they are really opportunities. Few ideas make it. Everybody has ideas, Millions of business ideas are floating around everywhere. Every problem anybody... Read More »
Nobody is Going to Pay You For Your Ideas
by Tim Berry
Yesterday somebody posted an interesting comment on the bottom of my post ‘How to Sell an Idea to a Big Company.’ Sadly, that post explains to people why they can’t sell their ideas to big companies. Most of the 70-some comments there are from people who ignore what the post says and share how great... Read More »
Q&A revisited: Really, How Do I Sell My Idea to a Big Company. Part 2.
by Tim Berry
Irony: This post from about a year ago explains why you can’t sell an idea to a large company, and recommends not even trying. And dozens of reader comments ask how to do exactly what the post itself says they shouldn’t even try. And I get more comments all the time, plus emails on my... Read More »
