Following Guy Kawasaki's new blog, has been like taking a condensed business course (for free, of course). It's really good stuff, and the above post is a good example of his high quality work.
In this lesson, Guy tackles the issue of bootstrapping a company. He gives good advice, some of it pretty basic. My favorite point was his suggestion on how to make projections:
Forecast from the bottom up. Most entrepreneurs do a top-down forecast: “There are 150 million cars in America. It sure seems reasonable that we can get a mere 1% of car owners to use install our satellite radio systems. That's 1.5 million systems in the first year.” The bottom-up forecast goes like this: “We can open up ten installation facilities in the first year. On an average day, they can install ten systems. So our first year sales will be 10 facilities x 10 systems x 240 days = 24,000 satellite radio systems. 24,000 is a long way from the conservative 1.5 million systems in the top-down approach. Guess which number is more likely to happen.
If you are interested in small business at all, this blog is a must read.
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