When your new business idea comes to fruition it’s hard to slow down and follow steps. The last thing I wanted to do is a boring business plan. Of course a business plan even in a basic sense is a great idea and I did do it. The big trick is if you follow these four steps when launching a new business idea. By taking it a little slow you can save a ton of money and entice investors smoothly.
- Get customers before your business is launched. This can be tricky if they don’t have a way to sign up but even manually adding a couple customers will save you a lot of time understanding your marketing and how to cater your website to it. The more customers you have right away the better it looks when getting partners and investors, even if you had to give a discount or free products.
- Launch in BETA to get feedback on your product and website. BETA is a just a polite way of saying go ahead and let us know if we suck. This feedback again will save you a ton of time with your business’s direction and your market. Don’t be afraid to give away free stuff or super cheap prices to get some BETA users. In a sense you are paying for the feedback so it’s a wash if not in your favor. Dominoes for example spends about 50k dollars on test groups when they come out with a new pizza. If you can get away with under a couple hundred you’re in good shape.
- Add your site to BETAList.com, KIckStarter.com, and other start up websites to get potential customers, feedback, and investors.
- Once you have some clients and tweaked your site to look professional you can now search for investors, or they might search for you from the the start up websites.