Start a business while keeping your job

I saw a five hour energy commercial yesterday that said that if only you took five hour energy, you would have more time and energy for self-improvement. At first I was intrigued, but then I thought about it a little bit further. Does this five hour energy thing create five more hours a day? A 29 hour day? Craziness!

This is not the first post in which I will say that starting a new venture will take a lot of time, nor will it be the last. There are lots of good intentioned people who start businesses, especially Internet startups, and let them waste into nothing because they simply don't have the time during the day to give it the proper amount of attention. Life gets in the way.

This brings me to the main point, which is if you have a day job and you need to spend 40 hours a week earning a paycheck, it will be extremely difficult for you to run a business successfully. I don't know about you, but I'm very crabby if I do not get my eight hours of sleep every night. On a weekday this leaves exactly 8 hours to take care of my son, drive to work and back, speak to my significant other about her day, eat breakfast and dinner, and maybe watch a little TV if I can. This doesn't leave a whole lot of time for doing all the things that a business owner would need to do.

I've read a few business books about being an entrepreneur. A lot of them address this problem with a solution that you should quit your job if you want to start a business. I don't know about you, but not all of us have that sort of liquidity or flexibility to do so.

So what's my solution? It's almost exactly like blogging, actually. Just do a little bit everyday. Give it 15 minutes during the days you have to be at work, and an hour on your day off. Keeping the momentum up will allow you to make small progress until you feel comfortable or getting the sort of revenue that you need to go out on your own...

What to expect when getting custom development

It's entirely possible to start a new Internet company without knowing a single line of code. It's very commonly said that managers hire people who are better than they are.  This is especially true when it comes to specialized tasks and skillsets.

So I'm going to share with you the key to getting a quality site created from a dedicated developer. This is not really secret, but I feel that it needs to be said more often, especially by us  industry folk:

Be as specific as you possibly can when communicating your expectations for your startup to your development team. You can never be too detailed.

That's it. I know, kind of a letdown. But it's true! If you've chosen a quality developer either in your country of origin or "offshore",  and he is properly skilled in his trade, he will very much appreciate the fact that you are sparing no time in telling him exactly what you want.  I often tell my clients and prospects over and over again that they cannot be too detailed in their descriptions of what they are looking for. After all, the better I understand their expectations, the better chance I can deliver exactly what they want. All developers want to deliver perfection every time. If yours doesn't, give me a call.

The two types of startups

What many people do not realize is that there is more than one type of startup. This post is going to touch on the differentiation between the two main types of Internet startups; commercial startups and web treasures.

When many people decide they want to start their own Internet company or startup, they are mostly talking about commercial startups. They want to put up a website that is focused around a specific business plan and generate revenue. I have been this type of entrepreneur many, many times. Often, this type of person is looking to get away from their 9-to-5 job, live the 4-hour work week, so on and so forth.

Quick side note: If you think you have what it takes, I actually recommend going forward and trying to start your own business. It's not easy in the least bit. It takes an awful lot of sacrifice just like any new business does. As a matter fact, there are many of us who are not the entrepreneur type for one reason or another but this is a topic for another time.

The second type of startup is what I like to refer to as a web treasure.  Now I did not coin the idea of a web treasure nor did I come up with the term.  I first read about this idea in another blog post, but I googled it and I cannot find the term or the author. If you do happen to find it, please feel free to comment to below so I can credit the person.

A web treasure is a site that is extremely valuable to the Internet as a whole. Pandora.com is a web treasure. eBay is a web treasure.  Pinterest is a web treasure. Even though these types of sites don't initially start out as revenue-generating or even commercially viable, their use on the Internet separates them from the rest of the shopping carts selling any type of good or product. These are sites that endeavor to be more than just simple websites.

I've worked with a couple of projects that endeavored to be web treasures, although they are rare. One of my favorite clients wanted to start a bartering site for vegetables grown in home gardens. Each of the members on the site could trade their extra produce (I know I always get extra tomatoes every year...) for items that they could not grow.

Another my favorite clients want to start a site that would enable teachers to trade each other's private classroom libraries.  Since each teacher accumulates a series of books for their library for a specific range of reading level, his site word be a tremendous resource for teachers looking to get more books for their students.

The question today is this; for your startup, do you want to build the web treasure or a commercial startup? Identifying which of these your startup falls under will help you identify your short-term goals and draw your roadmap for success.

Restarting the startup blog!

I'm restarting the startup blog! There are many things that I think anyone who is either thinking about starting their own internet company or has already made the leap for the first time could learn from my time at iScripts.com and my own side ventures.

Who am I? I'm Jon, the sales and project manager at Armia Systems, iScripts.com. I've managed over 200 individual startups based on our software platforms in the last three years. I've seen many good and bad ideas come and go, and I'm proud to say that many of them were my own!

Preview of coming attractions:  how-tos, explanations, highlights of interesting things from across the web, a peek inside the development process, and spotlighting of new startups going up!

Please feel free to comment and message me for anything. Since this is a commercially-focused blog, I'm happy to help you vet your startup idea and even work on getting you a fixed-price quote for making it happen.

Here's to making it happen in 2013.