In seems, the only thing you can read about these days is how bad the economy is and the effects it will have on startups.
Howard says… it’s a bad time to start a startup. Andy says… start with a profit with first customer. Charlie says… he loves the challenge despite the odds. Mark Peter says… the strong will win big.
No matter what anyone says, the prevailing thought for a startup should be to show profits. If you’re showing profits, NOT just revenue, then investors, employees and anyone else pays attention. They say revenue covers all sins, but I would argue profits resolves issues, not just cover them up.
This week, I’m going to blog about the new startup I’ve created with another local entrepreneur. We’ve been quiet about it for many reasons, but have decided it’s time to talk. We’ve let prospects test our software and a handful of web friends give us early feedback. We think now’s the time to let others play with our software and see what happens.
I’m not trying to be coy about this, I’ve just approached this idea with a very different mentality. Rather than talk and talk (quite typical for me), I went to prospective customers first and listened to be sure I was actually SOLVING a problem. After that was concretely evident, I sought out the best co-founder to build the solution.
Armed with an immense amount of customer input and a very talented co-founder, my idea escalated very quickly into OUR company in a matter of three months. We’re fortunate to have a group of advisors and friends to help us navigate this perceived tough time (we think it’s perfect timing) to launch a company. Lucky for us, as this post’s title states we’ve aligned early customers and we’re focused and starting our company with profits. Much more to come tomorrow.
