How To Start A Business - Early To Rise

Accelerating Your Retirement: Start Your Own Business
By Michael Masterson

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When starting a business, you can drastically reduce your risk of failure by becoming an expert in two areas:

First you must understand everything you can about the products and/or services you will be selling.
Second, you must become competent (and eventually masterful) at the specific marketing skills you need to sell them.

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When it comes to launching your business, don't reinvent the wheel. Come up with a product and a marketing position that is 80% to 90% the same as what your most successful competitors are doing. Remember, there is a good reason that they are successful. By investing 600+ hours into learning the product/service part of the business and another 600+ hours on the marketing, you should already have a good idea about why things work. But you aren't yet an expert. It takes much more time (about 5000 hours) to do that.

And that's why you have to proceed with caution - one small step at a time. Yes, you should try new things, but as I said they should be only 10% to 20% new. Taking this sort of conservative approach will not limit your growth because you will be able to "catch up" later. If you aren't careful and try something entirely new and different, chances are it will fail - however good you think the idea is. Remember: the key idea is this: until you've had 5000 hours of experience, you are not an expert. Don't act like one.

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8 Important Things to Know About Business

Apart from starting (and sticking to) a what is already working (and not getting too fancy), I've discovered eight secrets to making a start-up business work.

1. Business doesn't happen until you make the first sale.

2. The single most effective way of entering a new market is to offer a popular product at a significantly reduced price.

3. It's ultimately about selling.

4. When choosing a business, select one that can be grown without your personal involvement.

5. Have an exit plan.

6. Focused effort is more effective than a diversified approach to business building.

7. Let your winners run and cut your losses short.

8. Pareto's Principle (the 80-20 Rule): 80% of your success comes from 20% of your resources.

Telco CDR Data Warehouse Reporting

Rather than paying fees for individual functions, carriers should expect Revenue Assurance and CABS functionality for what they are currently spending on CABS.

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Reprinted from Billing World & OSS Today
January 2004
http://www.commsoft.net/CabsConfusion01.04.htm
CABS CONFUSION PLAGUES CARRIERS

John L. Guerra

The largest source of revenue for carriers—fees collected for terminating other carriers’ calls on the network—can be the most frustrating, time consuming and inexact exercise a carrier can go through.

In a constantly changing regulatory and economic environment, carriers can always rely on interconnect partners to juice up their revenue numbers at the end of the month. Or can they?

Determining which carrier owes you is not getting easier. Bankrupt companies are leaving interconnect partners in a lurch, and poor circuit inventory and new regulatory realities such as LNP and UNE-P rule changes are making access billing more complex than ever.
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Thoughts On Being A Small ISV

The Business of Software

http://software.ericsink.com/Eric's blog

Paul Graham

Specialized Search Engine

A search interface targeted toward narrow areas could be useful for searchers and for advertisements.

Kosmix
ZoomInfo
Vast tracks jobs.
Oodle aggregates local classifieds.
Alexa web search platform.

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20071008
cluster results from multiple engines.

Asset Tracking

Tool Watch tracks tools on construction and maintenance job sites.

They announced a web based software product.

Beyond job tools, there are a lot of things to track.