One day, an old friend of mine who graduated from MIT called and said he had a business idea and wanted to share with me.
I said, “Sure!”
When we met, he showed me a thick business proposal that he had prepared.
I must admit it was a professionally prepared proposal.
After all, he was from MIT, one of the best universities in the world!
The business was about a hair grow product, something that had nothing to do with what he had studied nor his past experiences.
His next plan was to look for investors and venture capitalists.
Long story short, that business ended with the end of the business proposal writing.
The college might have taught him how to start a business, by writing business proposal and looking for investors.
But that’s not how most startups I know started.
Actually I’m no stranger when it comes to business proposal.
I’ve written several business proposals in my first job.
We did it to raise fund because I was working in a startup started by a university professor.
While preparing the sales projection, I scoffed.
To say it blatantly, the numbers were plucked from the air!
Interestingly, investors believed in those numbers!
Or perhaps what they believed was the professor, the founder of the company I worked in.
Even so, the startup I was working in didn’t begin with a business proposal.
It started from a room in the professor’s house!
Most businesses I know started small.
Overtime, they adjust to the market needs and grow based on market feedback.
Most of the time, whatever that is written in the business proposal won’t work, because the market is always changing.
If you have a business idea, go ahead and execute it.
You need to think BIG but start small.
Read the above again!
You start small so that you can quickly get the market feedback and improve.
You start small so that you won’t waste time doing tons of preparations for nothing.
More importantly, you start small so that you won’t lose your shirt!
Put your idea into the market, keep on improving it based on the market feedback.
When it works, you can scale up the business, get investors etc. That’s another ball game.
