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Three basic tips for aspiring “dotcom” entrepreneurs
By Jon Gillespie-Brown | October 12, 2006
FUNDING AND FOCUS (as seen in the FT.com )
Daniel Mattes, co-founder of Jajah.com, the Internet telephone company, has three basic tips for aspiring dotcom entrepreneurs:
Start out with sufficient funding.
"Enough money makes your mind free. When your mind is not free, you’re not focused anymore and you lose traction. It also helps a lot to be in contact with the venture capitalists – the prominent VC’s especially – because they help you a lot in terms of media attention.
"So you should talk with them in advance, even before you need money, to talk about your idea and to get their professional input. They know you then and if you want to get [first-round funding], it makes a lot of sense to go back to them and say: look, this was a project, it’s developed very well, now can we do something together. If you look at Google they did exactly this."
Distribution, distribution, distribution.
"There are tons of good ideas but if you have no exact plans on how to distribute, either through a viral mechanism or partnerships or whatever, you have no way to succeed."
Focus on what you are doing.
"The problem is that once you are out with a product, you are occupied with lots of requests from other partners with tons of ideas and you really have to sort out and prioritise what is really helpful for your business model."
Last 3 posts by Jon Gillespie-Brown
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About the Author: |
| Jon Gillespie-Brown is a published Author, Lecturer, Founder/CEO and Mentor on Entrepreneurship. He currently mentors at Stanford, UC Berkeley and the London Business School. Visit his site for tips by email/twitter, blog updates, detailed articles, worksheets, news, a free quiz and more! Go now to http://www.tobeanentrepreneur.com/ | |
