I am still learning!!
I recently read Zero to One, written by Peter Thiel, which I like to share some interesting parts of it as follows:
Whatever your industry, any great business plan must address these questions. If you don't have answers to these issues, you will run into lots of "bad luck" and your business will fail. If you nail all seven, you will master a fortune and succeed. Even getting five or six correct might work.
1) The Engineering Question. Can you create breakthrough technology instead of incremental improvements?
2) The Timing Question. Is now the right time to start your particular business?
3) The Monopoly Question. Are you starting with a big share of a small market?
4) The People Question. Do you have the right team
5) The Distribution Question. Do you have a way to not just create but deliver your product?
6) The Durability Question. Will your market position be defensible 10 and 20 years into the future?
7) The Secret Question. Have you identified a unique opportunity that others don't see?
SELL. SELL. SELL.
“If you’ve invented something new but you haven’t invented an effective way to sell it, you have a bad business -- no matter how good the product.”
This is so true. If ALL you do is build it -- they won’t come… because you’ve got to make sure that you distribute that awesome new product/service as well. Unfortunately, many of the most intelligent folks in the world (namely, engineers) don’t believe in sales. Or believe that “the product will sell itself.” The truth is, the product WON’T sell itself. We need to get up and take actionable steps towards distributing the product once we’ve designed it.
*THINK* ABOUT THE FUTURE.
“Our task today is to find singular ways to create the new things that will make the future not just different, but better—to go from 0 to 1. The essential first step is to think for yourself. Only by seeing our world anew, as fresh and strange as it was to the ancients who saw it first, can we both re-create it and preserve it for the future.”