In the last year as a result of the buzz InstaCarro has had I’ve been approached by several entrepreneurs or potential ones asking how to make the leap from the corporate world to starting their own company. As a result of that I’ve decided to write some hints that have helped me always I had to take a difficult decision and also to know if your business idea is worth the risk.
1. The No Regret Framework
When I received an offer to move and go to Vietnam to start a company with Rocket Internet I was shocked (more detail here). I didn’t know what to do. After a lot of thought, I realized the following.
- If I didn’t go: I would continue in my routine and little things in my life would change. On the other hand if I decided to go two things could happen…
- I could go and things go really well and would open new doors, learn new things, grow personally and professionally.
- I could go and things go really bad. If that was the case i thought I would come back in 3 months and look for a new job at home. However, if this happened this experience would still become a life experience with a lot of learnings.
After thinking with this framework I realized that I would have much more to regret/lose If I stayed home than if I decided to go. It was a no-brainer that I had to go and I’m happy of having to take that decision because this turned out to be one of the best experiences I had in my life. However,, I’m sure that if things had gone bad, I would still be happy of having had the courage of going and would still have learnt plenty of stuff.
2. Don’t wait for the perfect timing
I always talk with friends and colleagues about when is the time to do things. What I generally notice is that we generally tend to procrastinate on big/stressful decisions. We generally do this finding a reason to justify the timing is not the proper one. Or either the economy is not good, good things on work are about to happen, etc.
At the end of the day the perfect timing will never come and if you are waiting for the perfect timing you will never take that important decision. When you realize it will be too late.
3. What’s your motivation?
It’s always important to have very clear in your mind what’s your motivation for starting your own company. People always think being an entrepreneur is something amazing. But at the end of the day, this comes with a lot of sacrifices and stress.
If your motivation is “I will become rich with this business idea” I recommend you to desist right now. Look for something that touches your inner you; something that will make you proud of doing it regardless of the result. Money generally can be a good motivation to get you started, but that drive will not last long when you start facing the problems all entrepreneurs have to face. See more on:
4. MVP
If you are thinking of quitting your job to start your own company it’s wise you do an MVP before taking the leap.
Depending on your business idea doing an MVP can be easier or harder. If you are starting a 100% online company, the easy way of doing this is building a landing page, put some money on Google Adwords and start understanding what your customer acquisition cost will be. Some good websites for doing this are Unbounce and Instapage.
Before starting InstaCarro we called more than 300 car owners and simulated we were trying to buy their car. We negotiated with them and reached an agreement (obviously we then desisted as this was a test). We then called +300 car dealers all over Brazil. All of this was done from Argentina using Skype. This helped us understand how hard it would be to buy a car in Brazil, which % of people were willing to negotiate and how inter-state margins worked in Brazil among many other things.
All this to say an MVP can be harder or easier depending on your idea, but at the end of the day what you need to answer is the following: What do I need to believe for my idea to be successful?
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