I have an idea for an advertising platform that may be used on mobile and web platforms. What steps can I take to make it a reality?

Hi, I reviewed a lot of ideas trying to join Wayra, the Telefonica backed accelerator. Everyone thinks his/her idea is great, but only a few are really disruptive and have potential enough to be pushed by the market. Better than starting to build it, try to surf the Internet and look for similar ideas. Understand what's really new to support your idea, the potential risks if you finally build a business over it and try to compare your skills and background with other people building something similar. After that, if you are still convinced it's worthy to make it your live, start looking a tech cofounder that will help you to turn the idea into reality.

The first thing that I'd do is a SWOT analysis. What are Strengths of your idea (eg. it's completely unique), what are the Weaknesses (eg. technical problems), Opportunities (eg. market size) and Threats (eg. competitors).

This will help form the basis of your thinking in developing a business plan around which a key component is the cashflow. You can do all of this without actually spending large sums of cash.

Lastly, in my own company we have a saying, "Build the rusty mini-bike before the Harley Davidson." In other words, do everything manually and don't automate a thing and see if your idea actually works as a business concept. I've seen too many businesses try and build the ultimate solution right out of the gate only to discover that they didn't actually have a market for the product.

Whatever you do.....define the rusty mini-bike and work out the cycle from advertising, through to customer purchasing your product/service. Most importantly.....are they coming back.

First thing I would say is read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. He goes through the process of validating an idea very clearly in the book. Bottom line, you should find advertisers and validate that they are willing to pay for what you want to build, then you need to find your users and make sure that it is a system of value to them.

There's a whole host of product development firms and employees that you could hire, but ultimately, it doesn't make sense to build something until you've got your users saying they'll use the platform and your customers saying they'll pay you (preferably in writing).