10 Questions to ask before starting a business

The goal of these questions is for clarity and planning.

1. Offering: Clearly describe what you are selling. It’s either a product or a service. Avoid complexity, make it simple for people to understand what you are selling.
2. Unique Value Proposition: What makes your product or service different. This doesn’t mean uniqueness as in novelty but in comparison to competitions, what makes you better?
3. Market Opportunity: Population size is not a test of your market size. You need to narrow down on how much people spend or willing to spend every year in the category of your business. Is the market growing?
4. Competition: Who are your competition? What can you do better than them? Identify your SWOT (Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, and Threat).
5. Revenue: How do you plan to make money? Through subscription, sales, advertising, commission? A business is a going concern sustained by investment and revenue.
6. Team: Who’s running the show? How many people do you need to start and what will they be doing?
7. Strategy: In 10 years what will your business look like? Break down strategy into a vision and mission statement. Build a milestone/goal target for 3, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24 … months for the business.
8. Cost Structure: How much money do you need to make your first product/service? How much money do you need to sell and market your MVP (Minimum Viable Product)?
9. Financial: What are your projections? This is where investors see value in your business. How much are you going to make yearly? When and how will you be profitable (break even)?
10. Valuation: If you want to give a certain percentage of your business to investors, how much do you want back?

Answering the above questions will help you create a better business plan.

First published on The Latest Thinking