If you start up business or start up a new project in your company when do you set your turning point to launch your service and develop new products?
I'd rather answer it is going to take within half a year to a year until all preparation is done to launch the service. Thinking out business model , developing products and a website, raising funds from investors (you need to persuade headquarters to invest your project if you belong to a company), making plans for advertisement and promotion strategy is all things you have to do until you release the service at least so I think it sometimes difficult to realize your idea even within a year because there are too much things you have to deal with until your business starts.
However, one article of a blog changed my thought that it is too slow to implement idea within even half a year with startup spirit in the world of entrepreneur. I'll introduce two founders of "Gilt group" which is major online retailer named "Gilt" selling designer's brand's apparels at a discounted price. The headquarters locates in New York. I was overwhelmed by their hard working style and amazing growth speed.
One of the outstanding feature is they start sale at the same time every day and the sale of each one of brands close for a few days. Users need to be in haste to buy because the sales of each one of brands are changed on each days. There is a ingenious mechanism to incite people's impatience and pay their strong attention to the update information just in time for the sale by setting time limit so the access of the website is still growing.
Moreover this online shop strictly introduce a membership system so users cannot access the information directly from the search engine and no information for sale are appeared on the list of the search results. This point of keeping brand image carefully was supported by manufactures so GIlt could gather products more easily.
The two founders of Gilt was a classmate of Harvard. One went to ebay and the other one went to Merrill Lynch after graduation. After that, both of them met again at business school of Harvard and became best friend each other. After graduation from business school, they started working at separate places. One day they went to stock clearance sale of brand products called "sample sale" together on holiday. This sample sale triggered them to get inspiration and come up with idea of developing online market of sample sale.
One of the founders Alexis started preparation for business in July in 2007. She found two web engineers as co-founder and started developing web system. She invited Alexandra into this project. Alexandra decided to join the project genuinely by quitting Bulgari in September in 2007. Only 2 month later after Alexandra joined the project member, the website had already launched. The amount of term they spent for starting up this business was only 4 months. The reason why they put their mind into rough‐and‐ready method is because competitors were about to start business in same model and they wanted to have it ready by thanksgiving day.
Of course, this achievement in such a short time is not simply because Alexis's idea was innovative and had a strong energy to build up from scratch but also because she had sufficient and valuable experience at early stage of ebay and sufficient results to build up the ebay system in Canada as a manager in charge of ebay Canada. Plus, she had a definitely entrepreneurial network and connection through the experience in ebay and Harvard so she placed in the very good position to get a support from talented human resources as necessary. What I mean is not I envy her biography but her thousands of effort in multiple point of her life was directly connected to this moment.
So if you don't have such a experience like her, your probability of failing in business may be high even if you imitate her stance and idea. But if you regard failure as one of your results, I think you need to keep challenging until you success. Never ever give up.
I'd rather answer it is going to take within half a year to a year until all preparation is done to launch the service. Thinking out business model , developing products and a website, raising funds from investors (you need to persuade headquarters to invest your project if you belong to a company), making plans for advertisement and promotion strategy is all things you have to do until you release the service at least so I think it sometimes difficult to realize your idea even within a year because there are too much things you have to deal with until your business starts.
However, one article of a blog changed my thought that it is too slow to implement idea within even half a year with startup spirit in the world of entrepreneur. I'll introduce two founders of "Gilt group" which is major online retailer named "Gilt" selling designer's brand's apparels at a discounted price. The headquarters locates in New York. I was overwhelmed by their hard working style and amazing growth speed.
Only took 4 months to take shapes of ideas and open online shop
First off, I will introduce "Gilt group". Gilt is a online shopping site opened up in November in 2007. Their main concept is to purchase over-stock designer's brands' products which were sold in the past season and sell those products on the online shop at a very discounted price. Sales have rose up higher and higher year after year, the growth speed was as pretty much high as the value of the asset of the company was a billion dollars.One of the outstanding feature is they start sale at the same time every day and the sale of each one of brands close for a few days. Users need to be in haste to buy because the sales of each one of brands are changed on each days. There is a ingenious mechanism to incite people's impatience and pay their strong attention to the update information just in time for the sale by setting time limit so the access of the website is still growing.
Moreover this online shop strictly introduce a membership system so users cannot access the information directly from the search engine and no information for sale are appeared on the list of the search results. This point of keeping brand image carefully was supported by manufactures so GIlt could gather products more easily.
The founders are Harvard ladies
The two founders of Gilt was a classmate of Harvard. One went to ebay and the other one went to Merrill Lynch after graduation. After that, both of them met again at business school of Harvard and became best friend each other. After graduation from business school, they started working at separate places. One day they went to stock clearance sale of brand products called "sample sale" together on holiday. This sample sale triggered them to get inspiration and come up with idea of developing online market of sample sale.
One of the founders Alexis started preparation for business in July in 2007. She found two web engineers as co-founder and started developing web system. She invited Alexandra into this project. Alexandra decided to join the project genuinely by quitting Bulgari in September in 2007. Only 2 month later after Alexandra joined the project member, the website had already launched. The amount of term they spent for starting up this business was only 4 months. The reason why they put their mind into rough‐and‐ready method is because competitors were about to start business in same model and they wanted to have it ready by thanksgiving day.
Of course, this achievement in such a short time is not simply because Alexis's idea was innovative and had a strong energy to build up from scratch but also because she had sufficient and valuable experience at early stage of ebay and sufficient results to build up the ebay system in Canada as a manager in charge of ebay Canada. Plus, she had a definitely entrepreneurial network and connection through the experience in ebay and Harvard so she placed in the very good position to get a support from talented human resources as necessary. What I mean is not I envy her biography but her thousands of effort in multiple point of her life was directly connected to this moment.
So if you don't have such a experience like her, your probability of failing in business may be high even if you imitate her stance and idea. But if you regard failure as one of your results, I think you need to keep challenging until you success. Never ever give up.