“If you want to do your own business, start with a Vaguely Viable Idea”

Sharing a few things I have learned from my experience as well as other business owner’s experiences. Below is a consolidation of my learnings (incorporating my shortcomings as well) about a Startup’s ideal journey from “Scratch.”

We don’t talk about this!

These steps are the most initial ones that we forget as our startup grows, and we end up never talking about it. But these are the most important for someone who is trying to start something of their own from scratch.

I have not highlighted the Finance/operations aspect of business because at this stage its more about exploring and refining your idea till you can actually start investing in it. Here goes:

1. Start with a Vaguely Viable Idea

2. After you have the idea, which you feel passionate about, start the execution immediately. It doesn’t need to be a big step, a small first step is enough. And do it quickly.
For B2B companies it can be a Blog Post sharing their idea with the world, for B2C it can be a post on Social Media, showing their capabilities.

(My mistake – I spend too much time on building the website with my initial idea, only to change it later to a more refined idea, then having to modify the website itself)

After this, next steps follow naturally. What is important is you take and finish the first step.
(Eg. You might get a query regarding your services, or maybe related services that you are missing from your offerings)

3. Ones you reach a level where high-level tasks start coming, like preparing price quotations, standard FAQs, start a little bit of market research as well.

4. When you finish your first project/ get your first order take feedback. Add it to the feedback you got from Customer’s queries.

With the feedback and now the Market knowledge you possess, you can refine/modify your idea to a more profitable, practical and consolidated one.

5. Repeat the steps but also continue working on something alongside it.

Market research and Execution are ever present steps parallel to all this.
(This knowledge especially protected me from some major rabbit holes in my startup journey till now)

6. After you reach a certain point following these steps, you will have a final and presentable business plan, with finances and actionable next steps.

And now, you have a solid startup that has started operating before you know it!