entreprenurship

Today’s startup culture has definitely changed the way society thinks about business. The traditional business model regarding business plans with all the details, stats, bells and whistles has become almost obsolete with the generation X and Y group.

Nowaday college students, as well as high school students, are finishing school with major revenue generating companies. The beauty of the technology arena is that there are virtually no barriers preventing it from having a substantive impact on the world.

The power of the internet basically gives anyone with the ambition of starting an online company a fair opportunity to compete in the marketplace of business.

The most remarkable aspect of most trendy, successful startup companies is that they are established with little to no revenue.  Tech savvy companies are being formed in family garages, college dorm rooms and at kitchen tables.

This financially “lean” approach is called the lean startup.  The lean startup favors experimentation over elaborate planning, customer feedback over intuition and iterative design over traditional “big design – up front” development.

Although the methodology is just a few years old, its’ concepts have quickly taken root in the startup world, and in some cases business schools have already begun adapting their curricula to teach them.

[quote]The lean startup movement hasn’t gone totally mainstream. The startup culture has yet to feel its full impact.[/quote]

In many ways it is roughly where the big data movement was five years ago—consisting mainly of a buzzword that’s not yet widely understood, whose implications companies are just beginning to grasp. But as its practices spread, they’re turning the conventional wisdom about entrepreneurship on its head. New ventures of all kinds are attempting to improve their chances of success by following its principles of failing fast and continually learning. And despite the methodology’s name, in the long term some of its biggest payoffs may be gained by the large companies that embrace it.

One of the most remarkable lean startup successful companies is DropBox. DropBox revolutionized file-sharing by making an extremely easy-to-use, seamless application.

Founded in 2007 by Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi, two MIT students tired of emailing files to themselves to work from on more than one computer, Dropbox did not receive any actual seed funding until 2008. Now, Forbes Magazine reports that Dropbox is worth more than $4 billion.

One of the most notable lean startup advocates is author Eric Ries. Ries is an entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller “The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Business.”

Ries believes that rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, the lean startup offers entrepreneurs – in companies of all sizes – a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late. Ries provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in an age when companies need to innovate more than ever.

The “lean” movement is giving people from all socioeconomic backgrounds a fair chance to compete.  Owning a own business doesn’t seem like an almost impossible dream anymore.  With the right talent and team, a simple idea can turn into a revenue generating machine.

Steve Gray is the CEO of ZuuBee. ZuuBee  uses a social commerce micro-blogging storefront platform to list items, build a following, and have fun focusing on three primary issues: buying, selling, and keeping followers updated. Visit www.zuubee.com

August 5, 2013

Leveling The Entrepreneurial Playing Field With A “Lean” Approach

Today’s startup culture has definitely changed the way society thinks about business. The traditional business model regarding business plans with all the details, stats, bells and […]