Here's the scoop: I'm married with two kids and a solid career. I have a secure job with a steady paycheck, insurance coverage and 401k. I'm not in a position to take risk. But I have an idea for a new online business startup that would be phenomenally successful. How successful? Bigger than Ebay. Huge. And very, very successful. No, it's never been done before. Yes, it's brilliant. But now I don't know what to do about it. I would need business managers, software developers (lots of 'em) R&D people, artists, project managers, attorneys, accountants, and other misc. staff to run the business. How does one go about creating a business from the ground-up like that? Where and how do I get the money for it? How can I sacrifice the security that I have in order to pursue this? How can I secure myself in this idea so that someone else doesn't steal it? How can I know who to trust? I fear that this will just go down as another one of my fantastic ideas that I never pursue.
No risk: Sell the idea to DaDakota. Some risk: Start company with DaDakota. Enormous risk: Start company with DaDakota and Stefan Eriksson. Alternatively, ask DaDakota for advice and leave it at that.
finances.. that's the "easy" part. Small Business loans, grants, get funding by companies who believe in your idea, etc. I'd say you need to go through connections of people you trust to people they trust to get 1 or 2 people in to start the base. Get developers with a business sense and maybe a business guy, depending on how many you start with. But either you'll be paying out of pocket, or you'll all need to be on board with the "no income until this takes off" idea. How you give up security for it? Either a ridiculous amount of belief, or you work crazy hours on both jobs until it's more solid
just goes to show...if you've thought of it..chances are it's someone already has too... so go for it droxford!
If it's an idea that's easily stealable/reproducible then get with a patent attorney. I think you're jumping the gun on all that other stuff. Put together a business plan and get funding that way. Developers can be had for cheap overseas.
How much does a patent attorney cost? Where can I find a good one? (note: although I actually work for a law-firm, there's no way I could afford our attorneys).
Where do you live...Houston? if you're in Houston, you might try googling Houston start-ups, or Houston angels, etc. I know there are some regular start-up groups around town. You might be best off attending a get together like that to just get a feel of what it really means to start your own tech company.
They're expensive. A simple patent search & application will probably cost a couple of grand. But that's probably one of those things you don't want to eff up. I would follow Jay's advice and get a general feel for doing a start-up. But a patent search is a good idea simply because you don't want to put so much energy into it only to find out you're reinventing the wheel. A lot of ideas that are not on the market are already patented. How are you sure this idea hasn't been thought of before? Just because you did a Google search and didn't see anyone selling it?
^^ to that end, you can do a lot of the groundwork yourself. http://www.google.com/patents you have to sort through a lot of patents, but it's google-based, so super user friendly and actually somewhat enjoyable if you like this type of thing.
I have some similar ideas in the health and fitness arena. I never had the time to really do all the leg work though to try to get it off the ground. I did go over to gobignetwork.com and it has a bunch of private equity and angel investors listed and you can post your venture idea. You could probably find those type of people on LinkedIn as well. The gobignetwork website seemed the best of all the places I could find for start ups though. I'm in the insurance business myself but always wanted to do a start up. Looks like i'll start my own agency but I haven't given up my online business idea just yet. Maybe one day. Good luck to you.
Instead of starting from scratch, buy an existing business that has the infrastructure you need. Then switch gears and have it pump out your idea.
Very cool link. Thank you! I'll check it out. An interesting idea, but I don't know anything about buying a business.
