Developing my survey and getting responses?

These are some great questions. As an entrepreneur, growing and scaling my business has been both a challenging and rewarding task. I'll answer both your questions separately: 1. How should you decide which business idea to pursue? Your decision should take into account both personal factors and should have regard to your environment, your market and your resources. From a personal perspective, choose an industry which (1) you are passionate about and (2) you have knowledge/experience in. This will considerably reduce your risk of failure. As a startup founder, you will find your job to be extremely challenging and the only way to succeed is through resilience. If you are not passionate, you will easily give up. Having the knowledge and expertise of your industry will not only give you more gravitas but also save you lots of time in research and understanding the wants and needs of your customer. From a larger perspective - ensure your business solves a problem that is large enough to build a profitable business out of. Here is a non-exhaustive list of questions to help you get there: 1. What is your intended customer base? It is harder to target a broad and general audience - try to establish a niche customer base which needs your products and/or services. 2. What problem does your service/product solve? Identifying a problem and providing a solution is the heart of every innovative idea. 3. How can you add value to the product and customer experience? Your customers need to gain benefit from purchasing your goods/services. 4. What are the most unusual characteristics of your business which will give you competitive advantage on the market? Establishing yourself in the market means you need some advantage over your competitors to attract their customers or new ones. 5. Have you researched your competition? In what ways do you feel you can do better than the competition? You need to know who are you facing to understand your market share, and how can you provide better solutions. 6. Do you have access to all the resources you need to launch the business? This includes funding, manpower, premises, equipment etc. 7. What is the size of the market? Do your research! 8. What would it take to create a minimum viable product and test it on the market? You don’t need a finished product to launch, start small and test your ideas. 9. What will it take to make profit? You need to have at least some estimated financial projections as to what you need to spend and what you need to earn in order to break even and then make a profit. 10. Is the problem you are trying to solve on the top priority list of the potential customers? Important consideration to see whether your products will sell. 11. What is your business model? How do you plan on charging your customers, how do your competitors do it, can you create additional revenue streams? 12. Is there a potential for growth? Think in the long term, can you scale the business further? 13. What are the possible roadblocks you are likely to face? You should attempt to find a solution for each problem you can think of. 14. Have you chosen a business name? Make sure that your name is descriptive of the branding and targets your customers. Ask people their input - choosing a name is an important matter as it will affect the rest of your branding. 15. Have you looked for your business name online? Ensure that no other business can be confused with yours. Ensure that the domain name and all social media accounts for your business name are available. I hope this answers your first question. 2. How do I decide which direction to invest my energy in and how can I develop my idea further? This will come to you much more clearly once you have found the answers to your first question. Ensure that you are spending your time in a way that produces results. Your first goal is to bring your MVP, to test it amongst customers, to learn from feedback and then to improve your product. Repeat this formula until you reach product market fit. I hope this helps - please don't hesitate to get on a call with me if you'd like to drill this down further.

Hi First of all, the fact that you are talking about market validation is great. I've seen so many startups invest time and money, only to find that no ones wants/needs their product, or that they only want a certain aspect of it, or they aren't willing to pay the requested price. So you're already one step ahead. Answer: the sooner you validate your product, the better! That said, the version you are validating needs to be representative of the end product, or else the validation isn't reliable. So in your case, I would: 1. create a business model canvas (which is what all startups should start with before creating a business plan), 2. Setup a Wix or Wordpress website (this can be done for free / very low costs). On the website, include the price of the product, and enable people to order it (even if it doesn't exist!). I am happy to explain how this can be done even though you don't yet have the final product and by still being fair to the people who click the "buy/order" button. 3. Spend a small amount (say $100 - but depends on your budget) validating the idea. This way, after only spending a very small amount, you will be able to know (if done right): a. Do people like your product. b. Do people want/need your product (not the same as 'a'). c. Are people willing to pay for your product? d. How much are they willing to pay? (you can check this by having 2 landing pages for payment - each with a different price). I'm happy to help you with this matter further, as this is a critical stage. Best of luck!

Use Google Forms. It works well to conduct surveys. They have lot of the functionality built in. You can use it for a number of other things as well.

Great question, many entrepreneurs are stuck before launch because of this hurdle. I have helped many individuals turn full time entrepreneurs through succinct consecutive coaching in various industries. Here are my suggestions, but keep in mind they are generic because you didn't provide any details. 1. If you have a prototype or design, re-design it with the intentional focus of removing certain features. Making trade offs are critical and simplify your introduction, pitch, and value proposition as well increase the chances of people being 100% impressed with the limited featured offering rather than semi impressed and focus on what is done wrong. 2. aim for simplicity in your pitch, avoid jargon and create a simple story on how to present the problem solution your 1 or 2 features is offering. - go to older family members for this, not friends or coworkers. 3. go to Fiverr.com and maybe if needed look there for a cheap and quick prototype mockup. 4. create simple landing page to present as if you are a fully working startup. go to www.instapage.com for quick landing pages and if you want a domain go to www.unthinkhosting.com for cheap domains - use code unthink for discount, it should give you some savings there. 5. go to startup weekend events instead of all 3/4 above and just create a simple pitch (under 1 minute) to present your problem and solution idea. if selected you get a team for a full weekend to validate something together. 6. Or create a facebook product page, upload some images (not sales pitches) of problems w/ problem story descriptions... post a lot of those... randomly posting images of your product (already simplified in features) and launch a small budget campaign, say $15.00 for paid advertising featuring your simplified product image, little or not text in the image but with a very short story and solution as header. trust me, is critical that you remove features. If you are not willing to make trade offs, from my experience you are not ready to try entrepreneurship at all. I hope this helps and look forward to seeing you succeed! Humberto Valle

I've done this in the past. I find the best way is to do it in person. I made a habit of walking on my downtown street between lunch and asking the local business owners about their challenges of their business. I don't know if there's a number...I think idea extraction should become a part of your daily routine. Here are some questions you can ask: So your business does X? What is your role in the business? What does a typical day look like for you? Can you walk me through the first couple hours of your day? What are the first few things you do each morning? How many customers are you working with a month right now? What’s been your best month? What’s been your worst? What are a couple activities you have in your day that you just don’t enjoy? Getting Deeper Thinking about the last couple days at work, what has been the most challenging part? What do you use excel for in your business?** What is the most expensive problem in your business? What’s a problem that you’ve tried to solve in the past but didn’t work for you? What would you like to do with you mobile phone, but can’t?