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Characteristics of successful founders

The irony is that the more successful you get at what you do, the less of it you will do. When your team grows, your days will gradually fill up with work unrelated to your profession: you will spend most of your time managing relationships with people responsible for funding your company (paying customers and investors) and people who work in it. The lessons in part 1 explore nine characteristics founders must have if they want to grow beyond a one-person practice

Principles

Have strong principles. Your source of truth to help you do what’s right instead of what’s easy.

Mastery

Be an expert in your field. You are in the business of solving other people’s problems. It’s easier when you know what you’re doing.

Mission

Be mission-driven. A mission is a way to describe what success of your venture is, so everyone on your team works towards the same goal.

Clarity

Make decisions with confidence. Having a framework to prioritize your work is key to achieving results effectively.

Strategy

Plan your path to clearly defined results. The strategy is about finding the most effective use of limited resources.

Strategy (part 2)

Plan your path to clearly defined results. The strategy is about finding the most effective use of limited resources.

Market pull

Respond to demand. The easiest way to create value is to solve an existing problem.

Momenum

Build momentum. Big companies are just small companies that kept building momentum.

Innovation

Know how to outperform competitors in any market circumstances.

Execution

Know how to effectively organize other people to get the best results.

Lifestyle stages of entrepreneurs

You must create circumstances that inspire you to do your best work — lifestyle has a significant impact on how you feel about your work, yourself, and others. It's hard to change lives of others if you are miserable, but the good news is that your lifestyle can be designed just like any part of your life. The lessons in part 2 explore how your lifestyle goals affect your business model.

Freedom

Everyone wants freedom, but not everyone has the discipline to make it work.

Control

The best way accelerate growth is to build a company.

Legacy

Your purpose beyond business.

How to find the perfect business model

The third and last part of the course compares the five business types to help you understand the pros and cons of each, so you can select the appropirate business model for your first business — a combination of lifestyle considerations, business type, and a marketing tactic explored in idea grid lesson.

You can solve the same problem in five different ways. For example, if your customer is hungry, you can sell them an oven (your product) or prepare them a meal at your restaurant (service). You could let them order takeout from one of many food vendors (marketplace) or let them use your bakery to make their produce (platform). Finally, you can sell them a loaf of bread from your store. Selecting the right business type depends on a variety of factors including your customer's needs, your domain and technology expertise, your lifestyle goals, and strategic priorities such as growth vs. cash flow.

Product

Build a useful tool that automates or speeds up repetitive work. Hard to make, easy to scale./p>

Service

Solve your customer’s problem by doing it yourself. Easy to start, hard to scale.

Platform

Provide a community with tools to make their solutions. Hard to build, easy to scale.

Marketplace

Connect buyers and sellers. Easy to build, hard to scale.

Online store

Sell products online. Easy to build, hard to scale.

Marketing

What you sell is not always what you market. Compare nine tactics to acquire customers.

Idea grid

Combine five factors to estimate whether your business model is worth validating.

Idea theft

3 minute read

I don't want to sound like a jerk but what if someone has a good idea and you say it's not and market it for your own purposes? I'm NOT saying you would but trust on FB is kind of limited and I am sure someone is thinking this very thing. I'm just the mouthpiece. Nothing personal I promise?

This was a real post from someone on Facebook

What if someone steals your idea?

This is a very valid concern for “basement entrepreneurs.” Let me put it to you this way - there is no shortage of ideas in the world. Whatever genius plan you're hatching to dominate the world, there are probably 10 teams out there right now, more experienced, better funded, working on the same thing. And if nobody is doing what you’re doing - it’s for a reason, trust me on this one.

200 years ago it was possible to come up with real “first of a kind” because everyone was busy digging in the dirt and screwing in dark alleys.

Make work ethic your best weapon and nothing will stand in your way

Today, it’s all about finding niches and innovating with “harder, better, faster, stronger” execution.

It’s not the idea that makes the business. It’s execution. It’s the daily hustle and grind. There’s no replacement for that. The more openly you share it with people, the more feedback you will get early on. This is the easiest path to getting early validation.

You gotta let your idea out there. You will meet people who will try to steal from you. I guarantee it. They are called competition. And no matter how long you keep your idea in the basement, the day you finally launch, these people will try to take what you built, do it better, and call it their own. And your job will be to keep one step ahead of them. That’s called business hustle. Make work ethic your best weapon and nothing will stand in your way.

Got it

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Introduction

6 minute read

Success is when opportunity meets preparation

When you’re 5, people say you can be anything in life. When you’re 25, they tell you to get your head out of the clouds and get a job, so most people end up paying the bills until they die. They buried their dreams and convinced themselves they have good jobs. If you are reading this, I know you want more from life — and there is so much more!

Owning a business is not easy, but the reward is worth it. Once you learn how to live life on your terms and generate revenue from your ideas, you will never want to go back to being "the human resource,” wake up with the anxiety of being late for work, or hoping your manager approves your vacation request. You can once again be anything you want in life — while creating massive value for others.

Welcome to the most exciting journey of your life!

Find the best idea for your first business

If you want learn what it takes to start a business that solves a real, practical problem and generates enough revenue to quit your day job — this course is for you. If you have an idea, this course will help you confirm or adjust the business model. If you are not sure where to start, this course will show you how to systematically narrow down your options to the best business model for your first venture.

To me, success is the freedom to work on what's important to you while generating substantial revenue so you never have to worry about finances and can focus on creating impact instead.

Fast Venture is based on the concept that the most direct path to success is building a business around your area of expertise that has a scalable business model and a lifestyle and will inspire you to do your best work. Here’s how to do it.

Course outline

The course is divided into three parts. In part 1 you will learn about nine characteristics of successful entrepreneurs to see what it takes to lead a company. The second part discusses the differences in three lifestyle stages as founders grow. Finally, part 3 compares five different types of businesses and nine marketing tactics, finishing with the idea grid — an exercise that pulls everything together, helps you select your business model and shows how to easily calculate whether this idea is worth validating.

Part 1

Characteristics of successful founders

10 lessons

Part 2

Lifestyle stages of entrepreneurs

3 lessons

Part 3

How to find the perfect business model

7 lessons

By the end of the course, you will have a good understanding of what it takes to be an entrepreneur; learn to quickly estimate the market demand of any idea, and evalute the success potential of any business model for any niche.

How to make the most out of this course

Complete all lessons in sequence and take time to think about each activity at the end of every lesson to unlock the next.

Most lessons take 5 to 10 minutes to read but contain densely packed knowledge. Don't rush through the course — I recommend completing 1 to 3 lessons per week to let the knowledge sink in.

The questions are designed to help you apply the knowledge and help you reflect on your thoughts later, to see how you arrived at some decisions and how your perspective evolved. The deeper you can go now, the easier it will get later.

Your answers are visible to registered Fast Venture members — I encourage you to read other people's responses as well. Learn from each other. Connect. Network.

Every lesson comes with a downloadable summary and a workbook for you to keep. Some lessons also contain links to useful resources and other tools — make sure to check them out.

Next step

When you look at your photo from yesterday, you don't see any differences, but when you look at your picture from a few years ago, it's easy to see how you've changed, right? Your idea is the same — it keeps evolving as you gain more experience until you look back and see how far you've come.

The best way to measure your progress is to write down your ideas and what you think about entrepreneurship today, and see how it changes by the end of the course. In case you're worried someone will steal your idea — read this.

Activity

Write down your idea

Write down your your idea if you have one, and describe what attracts you to entrepreneurship, what excites you, and what scares you about creating a business?

Get full access

Create a free account to add your notes, get access to lesson worksheets, download member-only resources, and track progress.

Get access

7 answers

Francisco

5 years ago

My personal principles are:

- Save as much fuel as you can, while you don't have a lot, a trip can take longer than expected.

- Errors teach, listen to them.

- Keep a clear vision (regardless of the vision changing across time), you have to see it in your head and it has to work before working on it.

- Always have next steps / checkpoints, otherwise you will ramble and that is not a good idea.

- Be pragmatical: you are good at something? Cool! You suck at something? Find it somewhere else.

- Be realistic: focus on what matters, note down the rest for the future.

- Build as simple and reliable as possible. Favorite example: WhatsApp. No junk in it, just messaging, reliable, for 1 billion people, for years now.

- Keep it real: things are not as bad as they seem most of the times (unless they are) nor as good as you dream.

- Use the cycling analogy, in this trip you will go over uphills, downhills and plains:

-- Suffering in the uphills is just normal, keep going is the target, speed is not.

-- Downhills are for recovering, use them! Enjoy the ride here!!!

-- Plains: define the speed you can keep for the longest and just keep it. Enjoy the ride here!!!

-- Always: watch out for hypoglycemia, water/nuts/sugar regularly.

This method ^ does not guarantee you will arrive to the end, but greatly enhances your chances!

Tessa

6 years ago

The Student-Athlete Academy aims to help young athletes and their parents navigate the world of obtaining athletic scholarships at the university level, primarily in the NCAA.

To start, the focus is on Canadian high school students and their parents as that is the same experience that I had.

The Student-Athlete Academy is the resource I wish I had when I was going through the recruitment process as a young Canadian high school athlete.

VladG

6 years ago

A rising tide lifts all boats and helping people live better are primary drivers for me.

Lawrence

6 years ago

I want to sell leads to help people grow their business on a pay-per-lead model so there is no risk for the business owner and they can rely on x amount of exclusive leads coming into their business.

Entrepreneurship isn't a choice for me, I just don't see many other ways of living that provide the things I want from life.

It's kind of exciting when you are broke and need to jump on some sales calls if you want to pay rent... Probably not the best place to be in... It's exciting testing new ideas and seeing them either fail badly or even better seeing them work well.

I'm scared of losing a lot of my youth sitting in front of a computer testing ways to get cheaper leads and trying to make money when I should probably be climbing a mountain, learning kung-fu in a temple or partying hard in the Caribbean... I guess that's why I need to make the F money.

Dorien

7 years ago

1. help people live better 2. dedication 3. sustainability in every sense

Jorge

7 years ago

I want to educate young people financially from an early age

Johnson

7 years ago

Work ethic, help people, rising tide.

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