Transcript
There are a whole bunch of free calculators online and I've linked to a
couple of them below that allow you to think about the different typical
financing requirements for a startup and that could include office space
equipment different marketing strategies it helps you think through have I really
thought of all the possible costs that will be involved with my startup so I
would highly recommend that everyone goes through a startup and operating
expenses calculator like the one below and you'll find Wow it's actually a lot
more than I thought or actually a lot less than I thought and I can do it with
very little outside financing a lot of people think that outside financing is
it's doing business it's great I've raised a million dollars or
what-have-you but in actual fact financing is really borrowing money
the person who loaned you that money is expecting a return on their investment
so it feels like free money but it's not free and so I think it is much better to
try and build your business from almost nothing and making money the whole way
through cash flow through revenue another very good habit for all of this
prospective startups is to keep a record a bullet journal a very simple record
and this is something you could do on a piece of paper or in notepad or or
anything and just keep track of where the expenses are going so you paid $50
for a new set of painting tools to stop drawing signs write it down the problem
with not writing it down is that your memory will be terrible when it comes
a year later and you've got a million different things that are going on and
suddenly an investor or a tax person our if you know advisor asks you where did
you spend all that money good luck trying to remember a year later all of
the little details so that's why keeping a journal bit a bullet journal is a very
simple effective way to to keep track of everything and and there's a great
website vehicle bullet expense Journal and it's something I think you should
all make a habit of it's a very good one and and will serve you well in future
and finally pricing your product is actually a marketing function what's the
difference between a $1,000 phone and a $100 phone if you look in the technical
specs at the same speed there's the same size that they take the photos one is
lighter same battery life but pretty much the same which one is better the
$1,000 phone or the $100 phone probably the $1,000 phone I can hear you all say
it is a matter of opinion there I'm sure great technical reasons why be one
thousand dollar phone is 10 times better than the $100 phone however you have to
decide how you want to position your brand in your product are you going
after the high end are you going after lots of the low end customers so I say
here price too high and you will lose sales but however you don't need as many
sales and that is of course the strategy that Apple is following they're taking
the high road and the Android folks are taking the opposite end but you know
they're probably making the same amount of money big in aggregate just because
when you price it low although you're not making as much money you are selling