What are the questions on every entrepreneur’s mind? We’ve decided to ask them and find out how we can make their entrepreneurial path a little less stressful.
1. Can I sell my idea?
The answer is pretty simple… NO. You cannot sell your idea because there is nobody who is going to buy it from you.
The ones who can afford to buy it won’t even talk to you because they are busy making money.
If you submit your idea to an organization, chances are you won’t get a return email or a return of anything that you sent to them (if you ship a sample). And to make it worse, you’re blindly sending info about your product without an NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) in place, so you are unnecessarily opening yourself up to risk.
Trying to sell an idea, no matter how great you think it is, without doing the homework required to develop that idea to a state where it has value, is a no go.
“If you believe you can come up with an amazing thing, make a couple of phone calls, and make it happen. You are not an entrepreneur; you are a dreamer. ” – Fred Cary
Entrepreneurs roll up their sleeves, do a lot of hard work, and find the capital necessary to transform their idea into something worth investing in.
2. How do I get capital?
A true entrepreneur sees this question not so much as a challenge, but as the next step in the process. If you’re developing anything, you will need money to do it. Maybe you have the money from savings or you can borrow from your 401k plan, get a second mortgage on your home, an equity line, or sell a possession you don’t need to get started.
The other option is to go to your friends, family, or your accountant. Talk to them about your idea and see if anyone wants to help you or partner up with you. Read our blog post “How to Find Investors and Get a“YES!” to learn more about this topic.
3. When should I try to get additional capital?
First, you would have to prove yourself. Go live and start making sales. When you do that a couple of wonderful things happen:
- It will make an investor’s YES decision much easier because they can look at what you’re doing, read the reviews from customers, and see there is a trajectory that can be more easily accomplished with the infusion of additional capital.
- Many companies will give you financing based on pre-orders you have.
4. When do I go public? Why do I go public?”
This question can arise way down your entrepreneurial path. This means you have made significant progress with your idea, but “going public” may not be an appropriate exit strategy for many companies. Sometimes it is better to talk to larger companies that want to acquire you or license your product for their use.
“When you’re first starting, you’re pretty much a one-product company and that doesn’t give you a lot of meat to go public with.” – Fred Cary
Although there are some big one-product companies, I wouldn’t think about going public before you have an arsenal of products, placement, and revenues that are exceeding multiple millions of dollars. Then you can make an informed and advised decision whether to take that road or not.
5. Can companies like IdeaPros steal my idea when I submit them?
Many people are concerned that their ideas will get stolen by the companies they submit them to. Our experience is that it is more likely that someone you talk to in a bar will steal your idea than big companies that are already swamped with ideas like yours. With IdeaPros, when you apply, there’s an NDA (a non-disclosure agreement) that shows up right away and protects you from the very beginning.
“Don’t worry so much about confidentiality other than your confidentiality in not talking to everybody that walks by you about this idea.” – Fred Cary
Check our blog post on confidentiality where we talk in detail about all the ways you can protect yourself and your idea.
6. What kind of business should I get in? What’s most profitable?
Don’t get into a business you don’t understand, no matter if it is profitable or not, get into a business that will provide a solution to an existing need on the market. Always remember that you need to be a “multiple product” company so when margins on your first product go down, you can be ready to conquer the market with your product number two.
“If you find something that’s new and different and nobody else has it, but everybody wants it as a solution, that’s the most profitable business there is.” – Fred Cary
7. How long does it take to get your product to market?
If we have to give an estimate, we would say 18 months, but you can forget about that and do it when you are READY to go live.
“Forget the clock. The clock is not your friend. The clock is going to make you cut corners and do things that are not perfect and go to the next step before the step that you’re currently on is working properly.” – Fred Cary
Have a question for us? Please submit it to our Q&A form on IdeaPros Facebook Page and we will try to answer it as soon as we can.
The “Idea Pros” at IdeaPros have the resources, experience, and tools to help you at this step or any step in the entrepreneurial journey.
We partner with entrepreneurs at any stage and who are ready to invest their ideas. Apply for an interview and let’s explore partnering together.