(Editor’s note: The following is the first in a series of “one question” interviews we are going to be posting. The interviews are meant to give you a quick snapshot of other entrepreneurs and hopefully they will inspire you.)
For the very first interview here at The Startup Project, entrepreneur and micro-publisher, Jarkko Laine, gives you some tips to keep you making forward progress. Jarkko is the founder of Bread Magazine and he is also a web developer.
*Question:
If someone has an entrepreneurial vision for a platform, a service, or a product that they would like to create, what are some steps you would recommend they take to make initial progress?
Jarkko’s response:
Step 1: Stop planning and get started.
The first obstacle any start-up must face is the resistance inside the would-be entrepreneur’s head. Resistance, as Seth Godin explain it, is your mind going into its primal self-preservation mode, trying to hide at the face of what it doesn’t know or understand. When building a startup, it often shows as doubts towards the idea: “Will this work?” “Will anyone be interested?” “How can I know for sure that there aren’t similar products in the market already?”
But here’s the thing. You can never know the answer to those questions for sure. Most great platforms, services and products are not alone in the market. Most weren’t first to market. Many of them started as something totally different and evolved into what they are today in a series of trial and error. And in the end, a business needs to be evolving all the time anyway, building something to lead the customers, seeing how the customers react, and then delighting them with your implementation.
I guess this method of working is easier if you are a developer yourself: when I have an idea I’d like to test, I just start writing the code. But still, even if it’s harder for someone with no coding background, I believe the general idea holds: you can build a web site for your idea and start collecting e-mail addresses from potential customers, you can start talking to developers who might want to team up with you (many developers are developers because they like to build their own ideas, so if you can give them some say on what you’re building, they’ll be more interested), you can even start learning to code (be prepared to give it a lot of time, though).
Most importantly, once you understand the broad lines of your vision, don’t wait. Get moving. Don’t let your startup be one of the many that never get started because the would be entrepreneur is too busy coming up with the perfect idea.
Step 2: Don’t give up.
An entrepreneur only fails when he or she stops trying. If your idea doesn’t work quite the way you wanted it to, take what you have learned and start again. In my experience, every iteration has lead to improvement.
But this takes time — and if there are shortcuts, I have yet to find them.
Building a business, even a startup is a marathon, not a sprint. The winners are those who keep running until the finish line.
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You can learn more about Jarkko at http://jarkkolaine.com and connect with him on Twitter @jalaine. If you are a bread enthusiast you must subscribe to Bread Magazine and Facebook Bread Magazine.
