How many times have you had a breakthrough idea, seen a lucrative opportunity and the one thing that kept you from making this idea real was lack of knowledge about the technology on how to do it, im talking about tech startups. This happened too many times to me and thus i want to share some insights and help on how to deal with such a case.
First of all go on a hunt for a great team, you can't do it yourself so connecting and networking with computer science students is a great opportunity for you to get into the world of how tech startups work. Get someone capable coding and understanding how things go, seek for advice and if you think similarly and have the same goal then thats a door of opportunity. However there are some "programmer wannabe" that you need to watch out for them because they will just slow you down, copy or even destroy your idea. In my years in college i met bright and lazy students, started many projects which most of them failed but i learned about the ecosystem of Internet startups, the technologies which they use and what are their capabilities.
After you have gathered significant information and done a feasibility study, its time to do your other part of the due diligence, market research. Check out what consumers want, most of the successful tech startups are customer centric, focused on the needs of their users and if their idea can add value for them. Start with your friends and relatives, move to your neighborhood, do not be shy to ask and get feedback from your potential customers. Even though timing is crucial, take your time and put the pieces together, figure out if dots can be connected and once you have done enough validation go for it.
The next step is to get a product prototype, in this case a website or application, alpha, beta test and gather that data of knowledge, analyze it since knowledge is going to be your gold mine. You don't need to get it right the first time, build on it, trial and error, test your ideas on the early adopters (testers of your product/ service), gather feedback and see what is desired and what is non-value adding. This step is crucial since it opens the door for the next big step, so find a competitive advantage which you can differ from the others, make sure this advantage is sustainable at least in the short run for you to gather enough resources to survive and growth in the future.
Going public isn't easy, you need a lot of resources and experience which in this case as a young entrepreneur you don't have either of them. So start small, just enough to be seen by the big fish, just enough for your customers to start to realize the value your product/service is bringing and if you do things right your product will sell itself. You may even be noticed by a VC which sees potential in your startup and desires to invest, that will create an even bigger advantage for you, however be careful for what you settle for.
Social media is already massively used by startups to promote their product/service so you need to play your cards right and do something out of the box, extraordinary for it to catch the eye of the busy consumer. Even with a limited marketing budget if you allocate resources right and have a objective what you want to achieve, you can reach out massive audiences. Carefully plan your business model and even more importantly constantly update it to the environment changes and obstacles you may find. Don't think about making money in the initial phase of your product/ service, build a road for the future and the money will come to you.
Everyone may have ideas, what is important is how you deal with them, how you implement these ideas. "Sloppy ideas with a great implementation outperform great ideas with sloppy implementation".
https://insights.quora.com/Young-Entrepreneurs-with-a-great-idea-and-the-road-to-success
This is also why I laugh at people who are afraid to share their idea because "Someone will steal it". If you implement your idea well, you will succeed. If you get outperformed by someone dong the same thing, it's because they did it better than you. You would have failed anyway, even if they hadn't "copied" you. I say that in quotes because whenever someone complains they were copied, there are usually significant differences between the strategies and products that can fully account for why they failed.
Yes, exactly we live in a world where it doesn't matter for an idea to be great, its the execution that matters.
Interesting post I must say. I have been contemplating about this same thing for over a year and decided to do something that I think will solve much of this problem for young entrepreneurs that lack knowledge and or money. I've been studying crowdfunding for a little over a year now and decided to start what I call a universal tribe that essentially would be a group of entrepreneurs helping each other out with crowdfunding efforts creating teams etc. The real bonus once this universal tribe is established is the instant use of it for doing a crowdfund campaign. Basically I've been involved in online marketing over the last 5 years building websites and such so I put together a website , youtube channel, and an email harvesting system to create the universal tribe. It's fairly new (like 3 days old) and may take some time to build it, but once it picks up momentum I believe it will become a very important network for all crowdfunders. Check out The Tycoon Network on youtube .... Tom Collins thumbs up to you ilirki