Young Entrepreneur Platform
Contents https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijfbvmb1uzi Startup Quotes Introduction Success Stories Successful People to Follow on Twitter YouTube Channels Work Ethic The Idea Business Plan Investment & Funding Marketing Make It Work
Startup quotes Fear is the disease. Hustle is the antidote. It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change TRAVIS KALANICK CHARLES DARWIN The critical ingredient is getting off your butt and doing something. It s as simple as that. A lot of people have ideas, but there are a few who decide to do something about them now. Not tomorrow. Not next week. But today. The true entrepreneur is a doer, not a dreamer. NOLAN BUSHNELL I knew that if I failed I wouldn t regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying JEFF BEZOES, AMAZON FOUNDER NYBEP / 2014
Introduction You have a business idea? Or you want to work for yourself? This guide is here to help you! The problem you have is that you don t know what to do with this idea. The guide isn t here to give you direct information about how to set up a business, but it will point you in the direction of where to find the best resources that will give you all the information you need when it comes to setting up your business. Watch Max Gouchan's talk at TED on the challenges that young entrepreneurs face when wanting to start a new business.
Success Stories Startup success stories - Shows how one tech startup app came together. - a Young Entrepreneur documentary - what it takes to become an entrepreneur, with insights from successful young startup companies. The Startup Kids Outta the box - a channel on YouTube with 153 videos on entrepreneurship.
Following entrepreneurs and successful business people on twitter can be of huge value when it comes to getting advice. The more of these people you follow on twitter, the more each day becomes a lesson in getting constant streams of business information, advice, entrepreneur success stories and current trends in business and entrepreneurship. It can make your twitter account become an extremely valuable source of information in terms of reaching your goal in setting up your own business. The people mentioned below come from a wide range of backgrounds but have all had success in starting their own business, or specialise in different business fields. Seth Godin - @ThisIsSethsBlog Seth Godin - is the founder of a company called Squidoo, a community website which allows people to create one page websites about interests and recommendations. He is the author of 17 best selling books such as Purple Cow and All Marketers Are Liars about marketing and what makes companies and information stand out and go viral; also books such as Tribes which develops the ideas of modern leadership rather than management. Seth tweets daily, with links to his blog which focuses as a whole on business, with a particular focus on marketing, leadership and self development. https://twitter.com/thisissethsblog Mark Suster - @msuster Mark is a two time entrepreneur and now turned venture capitalist. So his tweets provide the perspective from an entrepreneur but also from someone who now knows what to look for when potentially investing in a company. Mark is a regular blogger but also a mentor at Techstars, providing expert knowledge to startup companies. https://twitter.com/msuster
Guy Kawasaki - @GuyKawasaki Guy the author of Ape - how to publish a book, and Enchantment, the art of changing hearts, minds, and actions, which shows why it s important to believe in an idea that delivers something completely new and different to the customer - as well as ten other books. Guy s twitter page follows on from these with similar ideas in the form of articles and links to his blog, all with an entrepreneur theme. https://twitter.com/guykawasaki Caterina Fake - @Caterina Founder of Findery and co-founder of Flickr and Hunch. Often sharing recent news articles from the New York Times which offer advice to tech startup companies. https://twitter.com/caterina Natalie Sisson - @nataliesisson A suitcase entrepreneur with a mission of creating freedom in business and a life full of adventures. An incredibly useful twitter account, tailored to information on setting up an online business. Includes links to her video blogs, which makes the information easier to digest and understand. See also her richly helpful website http://suitcaseentrepreneur.com, where she aims to guide you through six steps to building a profitable business from anywhere and the freedon to live a lifestyle you adore. https://twitter.com/nataliesisson Ramit Sethi - @ramit Ramit is the author of New York Times bestselling book I will teach you to be rich. Ramit focuses a lot on communication and persuasion, and his twitter page offers lots of advice on behaviour in terms of changing your habits in order to become successful. Also there's a very informative YouTube channel, where Ramit offers lots of information on networking & communication, something that's vital for running your own business. https://twitter.com/ramit
Ryan Holiday - @RyanHoliday Ryan, although not an entrepreneur as such, is incredibly successful in business and someone that you can learn a lot from. He is the Head of Marketing for American Apparel at the age of just 27., and the author of The Obstacle is the Way - how people overcome huge obstacles to then go on and succeed. His twitter page is definitely of value to someone starting a business, offering plenty of marketing advice and links to talks he s given for TED and also at Google. https://twitter.com/ryanholiday Oren Klaff - @pitchanything Oren is the author of a book called Pitch Anything, useful information about pitching business ideas to investors. He draws on his knowledge of neuroscience to break down a more effective way of pitching so that investors are more likely to invest. This is helpful information which will be of huge benefit if you re ever in a situation where you need to pitch your business, either to friends, family or investors. https://twitter.com/pitchanything
Here is a list of YouTube channels to subscribe to that form a useful resource to learn the ideas, skills, and inspiration to setup your business - including entrepreneurs and people who provide information in specific fields that are needed to setup your business, for instance marketing, finance and strategy. Jay Adelson - Ask Jay This is the best YouTube channel to start with, as it provides videos from a complete beginner's perspective on how you would go about starting your business. It offers information from launching to successfully operating your business. Sulibreezy Suli Breaks is a spoken word artist who conveys messages to young people in the form of poems that are designed to inspire and motivate. His YouTube channel has 147 videos which are designed to give you the motivation to believe in what you want to do. Sully is a successful entrepreneur, and his channel contains useful information that will motivate you to produce your own ideas. This week in startups This week in startups already has over 60,000 subscribers and over 1,000 videos. This channel will provide more information than you could ever need about online businesses, from up to date interviews from founders of new tech companies all the way to how to raise money from investors. This channel offers strategies for improving your business, motivating your team and starting your own company.
What Does It Take? Behind the brand 178 videos - gives you insights to grow your business, from the experts that have done it already with weekly interviews with successful business people and entrepreneurs. David Garland - The rise to the top Helping mediapreneurs: people that have an online blog, web show, or YouTube channel offering advice to these people that want to monetise, showing you how to grow your audience and subscribers. Offers information such as how to make money from a blog, web show or podcast. Also shares a lot of success habits of successful mediapreneurs and tips from productivity to hacks to make sure you stay focused when working on your business whether it's a blog, website or podcast.
Work Ethic Before starting a business you need to be aware of the effort that it takes, and this section is here to give you a better understanding of the commitment you will have to put in. So what effort does it take to make a business successful? Everyone likes the idea of owning their own business, but without having an incredibly focused work ethic your chances of success will be much smaller. Before you take action on starting your own business, this section will make you aware of the effort that it will take. The 10x Rule - Grant Cardone A great book by Grant Cardone, about business goal setting and creating a work ethic that will meet these goals. Before thinking about any business ideas, this book will firstly put into context the amount of work that you will have to put in and then helps you to develop the work ethic to achieve your goals.
The Idea This section provides you with some websites to use as ideas and inspiration to develop a potential business. It will then guide you with resources that will give you a better understanding of what you should then do with this idea. But before that, watch the video link below to give you some inspiration about crazy business ideas. It doesn t matter how crazy your business idea is: www.entrepreneur.com/ This divides potential business ideas up into different industries and your different interests, including low cost, home based and unusual ideas. startups.co.uk/business-ideas/ at business ideas that are specific to current trends and specific Looks to 2014. smarta.com - 30 part time businesses you can start for-peanuts/ This link looks at potential part time businesses, ideal for potentially doing whilst still in education or when going to university.
Business Plan Writing a business plan is the first step to developing your original idea into a business. A business plan is there to lay out all the aspects and goals of your business, and then demonstrate how you will reach these goals. A basic outline of a business plan will include: What will your business do? Information about product or service Who are your customers? How it will be sold? Before reading anything more about business plans, watch the two videos below which will tell you everything you need to know about writing your business plan. When it comes to writing your business plan: Business plan template from Barclays Business plan template from the Prince's Trust
Bplans is a great website for looking at sample business plans, especially as the business plans are specific to different business ideas and industries : http://www.bplans.co.uk/sample_business_plans.cfm If the above sources are too complex for your business idea then watch the video below:
Investment & Funding You came up with your business idea, then developed your idea into a business plan. Now to the next step to turn this plan into a tangible product, and take your business as far as you can without attaining investment. In order to get investment you need to prove that your business will work and also that you have the ability to make it work. This is why it s important to develop your business as much as you can before you turn to investors, when you finally reach the point when investment is needed. This section will point you in the right direction of what to do and where to go. Before looking any information below, check out http://www.startuploans.co.uk This website provides a huge amount of information for new businesses that want investment. Small Business Grants - The Prince's Trust The Prince's Trust offers loan support to 18-30 to set up a business, this a good place to start. Smallbusiness.co.uk - This site provides all the information needed about getting a grant for your business. Business Loan A business loan is funding given to your business, to be repaid by a certain date. This form of investment is usually provided by all UK banks - for example: Barclays Business Loans offers business loans from 1000-25000 RBS Lending for Business RBS Online Business Planner
Crowd funding - this allows lots of different investors to put money towards your idea. For example you may get 50 different investors each putting in different amounts of money to reach your target. Crowdcube is the world s leading investment crowd funding site, enabling investors to help entrepreneurs raise the finance they need to grow. Using crowd cube is a new way to fund start-ups and business expansion by giving entrepreneurs a platform to connect with people and raise venture capital. By attracting lots of investors who invest smaller amounts of money into a person, company, product, or idea you can bypass the traditional ways of raising venture finance. - http://www.crowdcube.com Angel Investors A form of investment from individuals or a group in exchange for ownership equity, an example of this is Dragon s Den. http://www.ukbusinessangelsassociation.org.uk/entrepreneurs/introductionangel-investing
Marketing Why you need to develop a marketing plan, and how to create one: http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/43018 Four Marketing experts you need to follow: Derek Halpern - the founder of Social Triggers, a blog that uses human psychology to get web traffic and sales. This is focused purely on online business s but will definitely provide you with useful marketing tips when starting your business. Social Triggers also has a youtube channel:
Ryan Holiday - a best selling author and also the Director of Marketing for American Apparel. His book Growth Hacker Marketing is a short guide to modern day marketing, a good starting point for a small business. Seth Godin - a best selling author, entrepreneur and founder of Squidoo. Seth isn t directly related to marketing; however he published a book called Purple Cow, a marketing book that throws away old concepts of marketing, and describes the new era of marketing - in that companies now have to be remarkable to be successful.
Jonah Berger - an expert on viral marketing, and author of a marketing book called Contagious, focusing on word of mouth marketing and what makes ideas go viral. Follow his website to get marketing information from his blog, and also you can download a marketing framework template which should help to make your business and ideas go viral. http://jonahberger.com Below is a great website The Ultimate Startup Marketing Strategy - a free online marketing guide which offers 28 marketing lessons for your online startup company. http://www.ventureharbour.com/ultimate-startup-marketing-strategy/