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Employee to Entrepreneur
book

Employee to Entrepreneur

by Steve Glaveski
January 2019
Beginner content levelBeginner
304 pages
6h 37m
English
Wiley
Content preview from Employee to Entrepreneur

Chapter 7Knowing your how

‘If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’

Isaac Newton

Today I work with many entrepreneurs to help them validate market appetite for their ideas before they go off and build them. I always begin with one simple question: ‘How is this problem currently being solved?’ They’ll usually fire back with something like their idea being a little bit better or a little bit cheaper or having some ‘killer’ feature. But being a little bit better or a little bit cheaper is usually a fatal combination for a business entering an established market. Not being remarkably better sets you up for a race to the bottom in what becomes a blood red ocean.

One night I was on a judging panel at a startup pitching event in Melbourne, where I had to provide constructive feedback to up-and-coming entrepreneurs who had decided to share their idea in front of 100 people. One idea was for a YouTube content parental control system, and my conversation with its promoter went something like this.

‘How is this problem currently being solved?’

‘Well, YouTube has its own built-in parental control system, and there are a number of competitors out there, but none of them do what we do.’

‘Oh, and what’s that?’

‘We make it easier to configure.’

‘Okay, great, so you’re a little bit better at configuration.’

‘Yes …’

‘Do you think that in this world of marketing messages and demands on our attention, being a little bit better than YouTube’s built-in system will get ...

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780730363866Purchase book