What's your take on this corporate housing idea?

I would not monetize this idea at first. I feel your platform needs to be able to provide this service prior to trying to charge companies to list their services. I feel this way for two reason, I as a customer would not trust the platform as I would believe that it only exists to pressure me to contract the services of the companies that paid to be there. I as a company would not want to put my company's reputation at risk prior to the platform having a good reputation on the market.

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

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.

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.

The answer: do both. The first thing you need to know about patents is that the U.S. now has a first-inventor-to-file system after the American Invents Act (AIA) went into effect in 2013. I have to disagree with Dan above: for hardware inventions especially, a patent is an important part of the business plan. The first inventor who "races to the patent office" now is typically the winner. This means if you do not file for a patent on your invention, you can lose the rights to your invention much easier than before the AIA. The next step is to think about how a patent fits into your business plan. A patent application is but a tool in your bag when starting up. A crowdsourcing campaign on a site like Indiegogo can validate the idea. But it also puts the idea out to the public and starts the 1-year clock ticking on when you can get a patent. For hardware startups, however, if you're not thinking about a patent upfront -- you're likely leaving a massive amount of your product's value on the table.