What free B2B applications should I offer?

There are a lot of places where you can try to get validation for your idea. But before you start going to look for these places, get your Buyer Personas (the representation of your ideal customers) in order. If you know who your ideal customers are, then the next step (of finding where they hang out) is easy. You can easily start tapping into your (existing) social network, for example to try to find people to have a conversation with and try to find out if they're really having the problem you're solving. Another place is local meetups, check out sites like meetup.com and see if they're meetup's in your area around the problem you're trying to solve. Go there and start talking to people! Online, online there's million of possibilities to try to find your ideal customers and trying to get a conversation with them, use Twitter search, certain Facebook groups around your demographic, newsletters, things like Quora etc. to find people hanging around and trying to get solutions to the problem you want to fix. (there's a ton of online locations in this SlideShare deck if you need more inspiration: http://www.slideshare.net/jcvangent/doing-customer-development-and-stop-wasting-your-time-startupbus-edition) Don't feel limited by the amount of budget you have, for having conversations with people you don't need a budget, you just need to know where to look to find the correct people to talk to. I recently wrote a blogpost around the subject as well, to give you some tips on how to reach the right people and what to ask them if you want to dig a bit further in the subject: http://inboundrocket.co/blog/stop-wasting-time-how-to-prove-youre-building-the-right-product/. Best of luck!

Hi This is a very broad question on: 'what makes someone a successful entrepreneur?' and 'how to raise seed funding?' Entire books have been written on how this is done, so any attempt to give you a professional answer in just a few lines would be unprofessional. Nevertheless, I will say that there are numerous factors that affect an entrepreneurs ability to raise early stage funding, among them are (in order of importance): 1. The team (how long they've been together, their skills, their past experience, their passion)/ 2. existing customers / practical market research: how many existing users/clients are there. If your product/service doesn't exist yet, then how many people showed that they would buy the product/pay for the service (you can check this without actually having the product/service). this information is very important to investors (just throwing out potential numbers doesn't cut it). 3. The idea - yes, the idea only comes 3rd, as in most cases you will pivot (change the idea) at least once or twice before reaching the final version of the product/service. 4. Your connections / the amount of investors you approach. 5. Timing / luck. If you give me more specific information (such as the type of product/service, the market, the team etc..basically your 'deck'), I will be happy to try advise you on the best way to raise money. For example, for a product, you should try avoid crowdfunding platforms unless you already have the entire manufacturing process and selling/shipping process ready. If not, you will be seeing 'fake'/copied versions of your product even before you hit the market. Good luck

I'd suggest that there is no "should". The beauty of being an entrepreneur is that YOU get to decide what success is. In fact - In the system I use with entrepreneurs you learn to define "success" for yourself and build it into the requirements of your business model.

There are a lot of tools designed to help "sketch" business ideas and business models. You need to be able to define and refine your ideas with a pencil and paper at the best. Other tools like Business Model Generation are great at sketching and documenting business model assumptions. I'm a huge fan of Bill Buxton's Sketching User Experiences and you can find his talks at http://www.billbuxton.com/#talk For UI work check out: * http://www.onextrapixel.com/2010/09/29/40-brilliant-examples-of-sketched-ui-wireframes-and-mock-ups/ * http://webdesignledger.com/inspiration/18-great-examples-of-sketched-ui-wireframes-and-mockups You goal is to be able to effectively communicate your ideas, your business and the next steps.

I wrote an answer to a similar question today which you can find here: https://clarity.fm/a/2877 The one flaw to your current process is this premise: "Whereas, if I focused on a good idea the whole process of driving success would be easier." This - from my experience - is simply not the case. I'm working on what I believe to be the best idea I've ever had and it has been absolutely the most challenging time I've ever had in a career full of product challenges. So a "good idea" does not make the process any easier. As I privately advised the person who asked the other similar question: I'd encourage you to define all your own pain points in your life and filter by most pain and also least addressed by existing solutions. Building what you know and what you're excited about building is the best that any of us can hope for. There's no path to greatness that isn't full of challenges ahead. Happy to do a call to discuss further.