Advisors

Advisors

-- Are people you need to help advance your company's success
-- Founders fail when they believe their visions are facts
-- Listening to experienced advice can help you sort out whether your vision is a hallucination
-- Getting an advisory board (by expanding your circle of accumulated wisdom past their investors) is so important that it's an explicit step in the Customer Development process.

Teachers, Coaches, Mentors-- Advance your personal career

--  If you want to learn a specific subject find a teacher
-- If you want to hone specific skilld or reach an exact goal hire a coach
-- If you want to get smarter and better over your career find someone who cares about you enough to be a mentor.

Key Resources

What are the most important assets required to make the business model work?
Do you need finance, physical objects, intellectual property or also human resources?

All these resources are what you need to focus on to bring your value proposition into reality. 

Physical Resources 

--how will you acquire all your physical resources

• Company Facilities

-- You will also need office space and a company location. It is important to know where and how you will acquire it.

• Products/Services

--This is where you need to figure out where you will get a hold of your suppliers who will supply materials such as iron ore or warehouse space.

Financial Resources 

-- how will you get the money to get your business off the ground.

• Friends, Family, Crowd-Fundraising

--Sometimes it does not require much money to start your business and through these people you can easily get money to start your business.

• Venture Capital, Corporate Partners, Government Grants

--If your business requires millions of dollars to start then you can acquire money from investors or government grants from your country.

• Lease-lines, Factoring, Vendor-financing

--Once you have made some revenue you can get loans from bank and financing from vendor who want to sell to you although you do not have the money.

Start-up Partner Strategies

When it comes to start-up partnership, here are a few key strategies that will get you off on the right foot.

• Recognize you are not a peer to a large partner

--To a large partner you cannot expect to be seen as an equal or on equal footing so get used to that.

• Don't confuse partners for early extremist buyer VS. mainstream buyers

--Do not confuse you your partners as a representation that the mainstream customer is starting to catch on to you business value proposition.

• Don't confuse big company partnering with start-up strategy

--You do not always need a large business partner when you are just starting up. Sometimes you just need a small business perspective to get your business off on a running start.

• Find partners that give YOU a competitive edge

--Find partners that are willing to give your the advantage. These people are the people that actually have an interest in your business and want you to succeed.

• When finding partners, treat it as dating, and see what is right for you

-- Be picky when you find partners. Also, you need to find someone who has a personality and a set of skills that you do not have and can fill you hole. 

Risks to Having a Partner

One of the biggest partnership disaster was the building of the Boeing 787. They decided to have different parts made in countries all around the world. They ignored the engineers when they said that the parts need years of experienced people to make. In turn, many difficulties came up and it slowed the building process by a couple of years. Not all partnerships are prosperous. This partnership made by Boeing was made by accountants and not by technical staff.

Managing partners are very important because there are some partnerships that just don't work out. When you look for a partner you need to find someone that will bring something to the table. You need to ask yourself how they can help you and how you can help them.

The problem with some partners is an argument between decisions. You need to know who is in ownership of the customer. It is hard to keep the power in balance. Another issue is having a committee or multiple people running the business. This makes it even more difficult to decide on a certain matter since not everyone will have the same objectives, and when heads butt, that is when a business crumbles.

Try Something New

An important part to being successful is to do something that nobody else has ever done.

Take the story of David and Goliath for example. David did not follow the rules of Goliath and fight with body armour and a sword. He tried something different and used a sling and stone. He implemented an idea that nobody has used before. This is what made him successful. 

Statistics show that in the history of mankind the underdogs have won 30% of the time, and out of the 30% who have won, 65% of these underdogs won by implementing a new strategy or method.

Sir Francis Bacon once said " If we are expected to achieve results never before accomplished, we should expect to employ methods never before used."

How to relate this into your business is that as a start-up you will always be the underdog if you are doing something everyone else is doing. There will always be someone who can do it better than you. This is why you should do something never done before. There is no competition when it comes to an idea nobody has every thought of before. 

Key Suppliers

Its is very important to have key partners that with supply you with the goofs you need. There a two types of suppliers:

Outsource Suppliers
- These are suppliers that supply manufactured goods such as supply chairs, and back office supplies.

Direct Suppliers
-These are suppliers that will ship you raw materials and components for the manufactured goods.

Key Partners and Suppliers

When it comes to a business partners and suppliers are the key to thriving. As a start-up, you might not be recognized at first by other companies because in their eyes, you are nothing but a spec.

Why Have Partners?

Faster time to market and New market

When you partner with a company you have access to there whole market and their customers. In turn you have a faster distribution.

Broader product offering

 The company you partner with also have products and while they are experts with that product you can incorporate it with your product to make a more broader product.

More efficient use of capital

 Why spend your own money doing something that another company is good at? When you partner with them they can more efficiently use their own money to give you the best service.

Unqiue customer knowledge or expertise

 With partners comes a new customer. These companies know there customers well and with this you learn more about a borader spectrum of customers.