6 Things You Don’t Need To Start A Business

6 Things You Don?t Need To Start A Business

There is no limit to the number of blogs and magazines telling you what you need in order to start a business (including this one). While seeking advice on such an important matter is certainly a good thing, it can cause you to be anxious about taking action. You may feel as though you?re never quite there, that you will never have all the pieces in place to start a company.

But you may in fact have all you need to make your move. Indeed, it may be better to know what you don?t need than what you do need to launch your startup. ?Based on the experience of a successful serial entrepreneur, an article in Inc. Magazine lists 6 things you don?t need to start a business.

One of the better pieces of advice is:

?A fresh idea.

Evans’s first product was a kit that made flames shoot out of a car exhaust–he’d seen similar items at car shows and figured out how to build one himself. After that, he created a successful company simply by?drop shipping?existing health care products that he sold online.

“A lot of first-time entrepreneurs try to innovate and make something completely new,” he says. “Nobody knows about it, and then the trap is that you need a ton of money to educate them. I like to go where there is already a market and figure out how to do it better and get more sales than the guy next to me. Going where there’s an audience for something, in my mind, is better than going where there isn’t.”

The error of trying to invent something completely new stems from a misunderstanding of the nature of innovation. Most innovation does not involve invention. It is rather concerned with increasing the productivity of an already existing business line. Think about the successful companies FedEx and Amazon. They did not invent parcel delivery and online shopping. They instead created a business model that made these services so efficient and effective that they came to dominate the market.

The article also mentions a huge social media following as a thing you don?t need to start a business. This is another good piece of advice. It?s very hard to build a marketing strategy around social media. The article offers some tips on other means of promoting your brand and cultivating a market for your product.

The full article can be read here. I agree with most of the entrepreneur?s advice. The only thing I take slight issue with is what he says about gaining a thorough knowledge of your industry. You should always seek as much information as you can about your prospective market and your your actual competitors. You need not let study stop you from taking action. But it is possible to analyze and act at the same time.