Strategic Advisor to Founders and CEOs. Took a specialty food manufacturer from capital raise to exit sale. Turnaround CEO. Food safety expert. Built five USDA inspected food manufacturing facilities.
25 years experience as CEO and Founder of American specialty food manufacturing companies. One company ranked #192 on Inc.500 list. Topics covered range from concept to capital raise and exit sale.
Social enterprise and "most profitable" are in conflict with each other. It may be best if you focused on one or the other and once the idea works, then either make it profitable or add a social component. Trying both at the same time has a very high chance for failure.
In addition to getting academic knowledge about accounting, marketing, etc. you need to actually work in an environment that allows you to learn about what it takes to "Make Payroll".
Until you know what it takes to keep the doors open, starting a business and assemble the plane while flying it means that your chance of failure and wasting money is almost 100%.
Go to the source - i.e. monitor government sites that list new company incorporations and then call the companies with your pitch. In the US that would be the Secretary of State website for each state.
First you need to calculate your costs. Then estimate the number of transactions per month Then estimate your cost and margin per transaction Identify who benefits the most and charge them 66% of the number you need and charge 34% to the other party. Monitor and test and be willing to change percentages based on what works.
You will need to start small. If you have a garden use that to raise some chickens from scratch. If you don't have a garden, make a deal with a farmer to use some land to raise chickens. You can sell some of the eggs and use others to get more chickens by letting them hatch. Protecting the chickens will be a major issue in the beginning.
Alternative is to raise money to rent land and build coops and get an initial amount of chicks.
At this point, you have to step back and re-evaluate your plan. The possibility for you to raise money this kind of money for what is a non-scalable, hyper-local business are close to zero.
I suggest you focus on making money so that you are not dependent on your wife's income and then: 1) Create a business plan for your concept. That will show you if your idea is viable from a financial perspective. Do the research yourself and do not get fooled by your passion for your idea. Be totally rational when doing the numbers , not optimistic. 2) If the numbers make sense, then start trying to raise funds by approaching people in your network. 3) Do not spend anymore money for work that you could and must do yourself.
For more details: https://z-niche.com/2020/02/21/how-to-evaluate-an-idea-for-a-start-up/
There have been many stories of successful examples in the news. The big one is the "Loess Plateau" in China, the "Altiplano" in Bolivia and the "Green Belt Movement in Kenya.
It depends which side of the afiliate marketing businessyou are in. A) Creating leads for products - get more products B) Selling Leads - find a way to get more leads by 1) maximize your copy, 2) Create more websites 3) find more buyers
The issues are: 1) you have to sign up thousands of suppliers to cover geographic issues 2) You need thousands of event planners to make the platform be of interest to suppliers 3) How will you monitize this (i.e. membership dues, commissin on each transaction)? 4) Tech stack needed is expensive
You can start with the US market and get the statistics from either paid services such as https://www.atozdatabases.com/home or you can go to https://library.doc.gov/company/research#:~:text=The%20EDGAR%20database%20provides%20free,company%20makes%20with%20the%20SEC. where you can select the appropriate data base. I ususally go here first: https://www.census.gov/ For pricing I suggest you cost your product from the bottom up with current data and labor to get to a COG number and from there build it up based on your goals for profit, marketing and overhead to reach your FOB distributor price. Best of luck!
As a Founder and former turn-around executive validating a business idea is a key requirement before spending capital on implementation. This is also a task that has to be handled by the originator of the idea so it cannot and should not be contracted out. My technic when doing an idea validation is to start out with my first degree network (Friends, Peers and Relatives) and then my social network. My approach is to create an opportunity for a one on one conversation that is not under time pressure and allows for open ended answers. The key is that after I outline the idea I mostly listen and take notes. Also whie preferrable, the conversation partner does not need to be in the same industry that the idea is covering. The best insights often come from the least expected source. Best Wishes, Herb
Herb has deep experience as a food manufacturer, great knowledge of the food supply chain and players. He provided very helpful advise for my business idea. A great person to talk to. Thanks again Herb!
