Don't fall into the trap of the small idea. Here are 6 tips on how to avoid doing so. 1) Pick a painkiller I touched on this a bit in a recent post. A painkiller is something someone very urgently needs. He would be willing to pay for it NOW if you could make the pain go…
Last Saturday, Juan Great Leap and Hybridigm held Dare To Pitch at the STORM headquarters in Ortigas Center. It was a pitching forum where we invited startups to pitch to VC's. No winners, no prizes. We just wanted deserving entrepreneurs to have a venue where they could pitch to institutional investors. At best, they could get funded,…
In this early 2005 interview with Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder described Facebook as: "I mean, I just really want to see everyone focus on college and make a really cool college directory product...there doesn't necessarily have to be more..." Zuck was intent on just focusing in colleges. He was ecstatic with his 3 million users. Then,…
I was shaving my head this morning in the shower with my trusty Mach 3. I thought the blades needed changing. I made a mental note to myself to buy a fresh pack of blades - the woefully overpriced ones at the grocery counter. I had been buying these blades for FIFTEEN years already - I had…
A couple of days ago, I was talking to an “idea guy” with 6 startup ideas he wanted to pursue. I listened and gave my opinion on each. Then he looked at me and asked: So what do you think? Puzzled, I replied: About what? Coyly, he then asked: What should I choose? No mentor, confidante, or…
I've been blessed to have talked to a growing number of young entrepreneurs over the past few months. One common concern for the would-be-startup-owner is funding. How do you get the funding to start? The two general answers are bootstrapping and raising investment money. There are other interesting fund-raising strategies arising, like crowdsourcing, but that's a topic…
3 months ago I was talking to whole lot of doctors. I was talking to our pediatrician for the needs of my older kids, our gynecologist for my wife's pregnancy, my surgeon for my impending operation, more doctors to get the clearances needed for me to push through with the operation, and even visited a few confined…
Okay, so you are a startup owner. Chances are great that you have limited resources. Understanding that you cannot be everything to everyone, you identify a niche and concentrate on that. I am now getting more and more convinced that the niches we think are specific enough are STILL oftentimes too broad. We have to go deeper.…
When we are travelling for the first time in a foreign location, time seems to slow down, and we get to absorb all the juicy details. There is no little thing which escapes us: how the air is different what clothes people are wearing how the food tastes how people greet one another how clean (or dirty)…
I've been talking to an increased number of people now with regards to their startup ideas. Will this work? What about this? Could you rank these five ideas? You know what? It really depends on you. Are you passionate about one of these ideas? If you are, then even if any expert or investor tells you your…