New Year’s resolution: Becoming an entrepreneur

24th January 2012

New Year’s resolution: Becoming an entrepreneur

Have you made New Year’s resolutions? How about starting your own business?

Tough economic times like these are a paradise for entrepreneurs as opportunities are arising aplenty. All you need is to have the courage and capability to exploit them.

“This is often easier said than done,” says Massey University’s ecentre CEO Steve Corbett. “Everyone has an idea. The difference between an idea and a business is that an individual had the determination and capability to do something with an idea.

“But you don’t have to do it all by yourself,” adds Corbett who is also the Chair of IncubatorsNZ. “There are support systems in place; incubators such as the ecentre are a great first point of contact. Incubators help entrepreneurs to develop their capabilities, fast track their business and overall de-risk the process, especially, if you are not quite sure whether your idea is worth pursuing. To make this decision easier, you need to figure out whether someone is willing to pay for your offer. We call this process market validation.”

There is really no point in having a good idea, with no market. “The concept of solving a real market problem is simple, but is often overlooked,” says Corbett. “Entrepreneurs will often, mistakenly, spend months or even years developing a product without having proven whether they are solving an actual problem for which there are paying customers.”

The ecentre specialises on taking ideas from garage to global and offers various programmes and workshops to support entrepreneurs.

ecentre’s 12-week practical Sprint programme helps entrepreneurs determine a market opportunity- saving time, effort and money. ecentreSprint can be taken on a part-time or full-time basis and entrepreneurs learn to develop and validate their business idea and create a successful business model.

Alexei Dunayev, CEO of TranscribeMe who recently returned from a trip to the US states “The philosophy that Eric Ries (an authority in market validation and lean start up) teaches is instilled in ecentreSprint… ecentre and the sprint programme are at the leading edge of entrepreneurship research. The help the ecentre and Sprint has given us, has taught us to focus on the customer. The feedback we are getting from customers makes our path is a lot clearer compared to before,” Dunayev adds.

Sprinters receive market feedback, get to market quicker, gain access to mentors and investors with different points of view, pitch to investors and receive encouragement with other entrepreneurs going through similar challenges.

“We see a lot of entrepreneurs who have an idea but simply can’t afford to quit their day job to figure out whether their business will take off”, says Sabrina Nagel programme manager for ecentreSprint. “This programme is perfect for those people as it de-risks the process for them in two ways, not only can they still keep their job but they also de-risk investing in something that doesn’t address a market need, as well as losing time and potentially missing the window of opportunity. They can test all their assumptions first before launching into the market.”

“And it is a good way of testing whether one can be an entrepreneur,” Nagel adds. “It’s not easy working full time and validating a business idea but neither is being an entrepreneur.”

The ecentre will be running free Business Idea Workshops around Auckland in the first week of February, check their website for locations and times. The first of these is on February 8th at the ecentre on the North Shore. ecentre is currently interviewing for the next ecentreSprint Programme which will start at the end of February.

ENDS

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