Zero investment business ideas for students

Zero investment business ideas for students How to find entrepreneurial ideas and create your own business
It is extremely unpleasant and insulting to any businessman if he knows that his business idea turns out to be untenable because of the huge amount of effort and money spent on its implementation.

Zero investment business ideas for students

in this article you will definitely found the best data of business .

How to find entrepreneurial ideas and create your own business

It is extremely unpleasant and insulting to any businessman if he knows that his business idea turns out to be untenable because of the huge amount of effort and money spent on its implementation.

Those who are far away from business may naively believe that entrepreneurs are looking for new ideas to start a business with minimal investment, purely to make money. But in reality, when businesspeople realize there is an opportunity to make the world a better place or successfully solve some problem, they try to implement new ideas.

People tend to map ideas for startups in their technology preferences. However, as a rule, grand ideas are not born this way, since the project focuses on solutions, not user problems. Any technology can be used by different markets, so in order to test every new technology idea, it is necessary to meet new business partners.

First, you should know which market you want to work in. Next, in this regard, you need to identify the problem that needs to be solved.

This approach provides many advantages:

Test new options easier and faster
There is no need to meet new people because you are talking to the same people when you are generating different ideas for the same market. To get answers to your questions, you just need to call or send a letter instead of trying to arrange a meeting for an acquaintance.

Use time more efficiently

For example, when you decide to go to this or that event, you are only interested in the answer to one question: “Will there be traders there?”. You don’t spread out and try to gain recognition in your chosen market. Once you identify your market, you can determine that serving your audience will be a real pleasure.

After all, if you want to solve any problem in the market, it means you empathize with potential customers. Therefore, you plan to serve these people for at least another 5-10 years. If you’re truly interested in solving people’s problems, business becomes more interesting.

Of course, it will take some time to find “your” market. Trial and error is inevitable. Any creative person is usually addicted to many things. So, at first glance there appear to be many markets where a successful turnaround could be possible. However, practice shows that not all problems can be truly “hooked”.

Test several ideas for different markets. This is your best bet to find out which job you really want to pursue.
Even your best ideas will have flaws. Recognize and acknowledge them. An entrepreneurial idea can only be successfully implemented if it finds a way to effectively eliminate its flaws.

Don’t give up on ideas that require hard work and hard work to implement. Don’t look for the easy way out. If you manage to turn complex ideas into reality, you will have few competitors in the market, and the younger generation of businessmen will not be a threat to you.

If a company has successful competitors, this is more of an advantage than a disadvantage. It indicates a need for a certain product or service. If you are clearly different from your competitors and there is evidence that this feature attracts enough buyers, you may even be able to safely enter a competitive market.

It’s not uncommon for entrepreneurs to find success starting from a narrow niche. If a small audience is very interested in you, satisfied with the quality of your product or service, and if there is a clear and effective plan to enter a large market, then success will come.

How did the business idea come about?

Ideas are generated in the process of communication. Share your thoughts, ideas, markets and trends with others. Therefore, you will 100% gain new thinking space.
Ideas are born from empathy. By delving deeper into other people’s problems, you can come up with new solutions.
Ideas are born out of curiosity. What will happen in the future? How should everything work?
Ideas originate from the subconscious mind. Write down the scope of your activity and the requirements of your idea on paper. Then just mind your own business. After a few days, the idea will come naturally.
11 Ways to Find Startup Ideas

Live in the future

In the future, the penetration rate of mobile devices, DNA text, and ultra-thin materials will be higher. What products and services should be offered around these projects?

Think about the changes and try to complete this sentence: “If you were in the future, then…”. For example, you could finish it like this: “…you’re surrounded by supercars” or “…no one uses cash.” Then create a startup that can make that happen.

Become an expert in any field

• 
  It is impossible to enter certain industries from the street, such as customs, nuclear energy and medical fields. Often, companies in these fields are founded after years of working in foreign organizations. Become such an expert and you will enter a promising market that not everyone can enter.

Michael Bloomberg majored in IT at investment bank Salomon Brothers. He was fired in 1981 with a $10 million settlement. With the money, he founded Bloomberg LP to provide financial information to companies in need. Currently, the company is leading the market. Bloomberg is the mayor of New York, and his wealth is ranked thirteenth in Forbes.

Build some powerful tools. Master the development of mobile applications, online stores, and start using big data. Then start talking to a lot of people, find out what their problems are, and evaluate how you can help them.

Become a cool expert in two different fields at the same time. Medical field and sales, IT and government contracts, culinary industry and retail. There are many unique opportunities at the crossroads.

Solve your own problems

Find out what problems are interfering with your own life. Focus on something for which you can’t find an existing solution. When life changes, problems arise. The same is true in the B2B world. You have a company that can’t cope with some of its own difficulties. You create a second company to solve these problems, and then this second company suddenly becomes bigger than the first.

Patrick Collison created the Stripe payment system when he got tired of connecting other people’s inconvenient payment systems to his previous projects. Flickr was born when an online game needed a convenient way to store user images, and the game itself was successfully shut down.

Find pain points

Look at how people waste time and money, work without the expected results, and suffer. Then show up armed and offer to solve the problem with the help of your project. Learn as much as you can about hunger, poverty, epidemics, unemployment, crime, traffic congestion, corruption and pollution. Build close connections with people who have been solving these problems for years.

Improve existing

Find out what people hate. They hate parking, looking for rentals, getting visas, moving, going to the doctor. When you come up with interesting startup ideas, think about how you can simplify your life.

Use modern technology to reimagine the way you do everything. How should workers perform their duties in the age of smartphones? What should hospitals do in the digital age?

Monopoly leaders have little desire to grow. Fighting them is not easy, but sometimes the cause is successful. Virgin Atlantic started trying to provide better service than British Airways.

Connect cheap resources to wealthy consumers

Buy low and sell high. This basic formula is valid at all times. Now it’s easier to connect products with buyers from around the world. China has many cheap manufacturing facilities. In developing countries – cheap labor.

An abandoned factory somewhere is sitting idle and can be rented for a penny. Somewhere on the other side of the world, people have lots of money but unmet needs. For example, freelance exchanges like oDesk and 99designs connect workers from developing countries with successful companies.

Most of the ideas in startups are copied from other companies. Many successful companies have gone down this path. What can be added to a successful idea? New distribution channels, better service, higher quality?

Borrow and improve

In the small business world, fashion trends appear all the time. Coworking and bubble milk tea are now at the peak of their craze. Private kindergartens will have strong demand tomorrow, and SMM institutions will have strong demand the day after tomorrow. These trends spread very slowly around the world, giving you time to get inspired by new trends. It’s more reliable than the unknown and more fun than buying a franchise.

In the United States, each university has its own merchandise such as sweatshirts, T-shirts, and hats. Before a student founded UniFashion, there were no such plans in Russia. Now buyers of his products can be found in any dormitory.

travel

Get ideas for starting a successful business on the other side of the world. Each area has its own trend center. The heart of the fashion industry is in Paris and Guangzhou, the software industry is in Silicon Valley, and the financial industry is in New York and London.

In the early 1980s, Howard Schultz worked at Starbucks. And then there aren’t any drinks for sale – Starbucks specializes in coffee beans. One day, Schultz went shopping in Milan and saw that there was a coffee shop on every street. Not only did they serve delicious coffee, but people also talked and discussed personal and business issues in the coffee shop. There are a total of 200,000 such institutions in Italy.

When Schultz returned, he tried to convince Starbucks bosses to pursue the same idea. But he was rejected. Schultz then left the company to start his own coffee chain. After a while, he did so well that he bought Starbucks, making it a global phenomenon in the industry.

Generate ideas for new markets

New products from large organizations create many compelling opportunities. If you react quickly, you can join this market organically.

Venture capitalists understand this, so they have dedicated investment funds for Facebook apps, Google Glass apps, and Bitcoin services. Businessmen and investors are trying to “make sense” when the global situation changes.

The same program works well for small local organizations. Following global construction projects – metro stations and airports, gentrification progress.

In 1975, MITS manufactured the Altair 8800, the first home computer, which was in high demand. A Harvard student thought he could sell software and make money from it. Together with friends, he created an ASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 and began selling it as a MITS partner. The student’s name is Bill Gates.

Improve useless products

Spend 2-3 days creating any product you want. Then chat with your friends and ask what needs to be changed so they can start using it. Make changes and ask the same questions. Repeat until you create a product that millions of people can use. Are you all familiar with the story of Ax Porridge?

Connect with smart people

Some people always come up with great business ideas. However, their implementation is often highly problematic. Ask these people to share their thoughts. So not only will you snag a useful idea, you’ll also get your first buyers.

Often, to business people, their ideas are the most valuable. They view strangers as secondary. Don’t let selfishness get in the way of a great opportunity.

At one point, Elon Musk and his cousins ​​Lyndon and Peter Reeve shared the idea of ​​creating a company that would install and maintain solar panels. Currently, their SolarCity company is a millionaire.

It’s better not to get ideas for startups
Here are some common idea generation options that often lead to failure:

simile

Every other person does X for Y, like the “Hermitage of digital art,” “the Instagram of video,” or “the Excel of hipsters.” This sounds reliable, but as a rule, such undertakings did not succeed.

Most likely, your market has its own characteristics and other people’s solutions will not be relevant. If this is the case, then your source of inspiration will come to sabotage your idea. Who needs countless Instagram videos when Instagram itself now has videos?

“Product Vision”
Many business people begin by describing their product or service in detail. It is not difficult to fantasize about different things, but as a rule these fantasies have nothing in common with the real needs of the market. Good ideas usually start with customers.

Great entrepreneurial ideas from abroad

Step lighting

You can make a fortune in alternative energy by creating a successful business in Russia as a small and medium-sized enterprise. There are many profitable projects in Europe and North America, but not in our country. Why?

The truth is, the country is not very interested in such an idea. Entrepreneurs in crisis are forced to focus on modest business ideas for alternative energy-related startups.

Here is an example of the implementation of this idea: On the streets of big cities, in office corridors, shopping malls and other crowded places, a special coating is laid that accumulates the kinetic energy of the steps and transforms it for electrical energy.

For the UK, Japan and the US, energy conversion paving slabs are no longer exotic. It was also decided to use the power of steps in crowded places in many states. The idea was implemented in 2012 and the work continues to this day. Pavegen was successful, installing the first tile samples at Westfield Stratford City shopping center and Wembley Stadium in London.

Ceramic tile has many advantages, including ease of installation and aesthetic appeal. At the same time, its capabilities include not only transformation, but also the accumulation of energy, so there is an option to start creating innovative trails in Russia by 2019. What kind of profits this kind of reporting can bring to megacities such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Saratov, Rostov-on-Don, Novosibirsk, etc. can only be guessed at present.

Produce light-up bicycles

Bicycles are a universal form of transportation that both children and adults enjoy riding. No problem with the bike – this applies to riding and handling, as well as environmental protection. But these vehicles also have their drawbacks: For example, they are unsafe to drive at night due to poor visibility.

Unlike car drivers, cyclists are not protected by metal carriages. Judging from different reflective plates and reflective stickers, the effect is certainly not enough. As a result, quite a few accidents occur with cyclists.

Not long ago, the enthusiasts at Pure Fix Cycles (USA) set out to solve this problem. Workers concluded that the bikes had to be fully lit for protection. After that, the world saw the first “radiant bike” Kilo GLOW – that’s how the entrepreneurial idea came to life.

The vehicle has a standard design. But during the manufacturing process, the frame is given a special coating that gathers light during the day and reflects it at night. In order to accumulate enough energy, the bike must stand on the street for 1.5-2 hours. After that, you can’t be afraid that you won’t be noticed at night!

It is worth noting that the Kilo GLOW manufacturers developed the bike’s color scheme in agreement with the customer. The owner therefore decides himself which elements of his bicycle vehicle are visible in the dark and can choose the color of the glow.

There is no doubt that such an entrepreneurial idea will be successfully implemented on the Russian market as well!

Make pizza according to customer’s sketch

Today, anyone with enough money can open a pizzeria. But not everyone can find an original idea for starting a business and stand out from the crowd of competitors. Here’s a great idea for startups in this space – making pizza based on a consumer’s sketch.

Not long ago, quite famous artist Jonas Lund proposed such an idea in the West. He decided to pursue his talents as a painter in a different direction. He turned simple pizza making into an art form.

Please note that the artist did not initiate this project alone. He pitched his idea to Famous Original Ray’s Pizza (USA), and the owners enthusiastically accepted the proposal. The point of service is that the artist creates the pizza that the customer came up with.

To order a pizza based on a personal sketch, customers only need to register on its website and enter a special section. There you can use all the necessary tools to draw your pizza. Visitors to the Internet resource create separate sketches on a special circular blank that appears in the open section window.

If the future buyer does not have any special wishes or has problems with his imagination, he can use ready-made sketches, keep them in a standard form or add something of his own. When the “picture” is ready, the chef-artist begins to turn the idea into reality, and soon customers can taste his creation. Chefs paint with various products.

This site contains a large collection of standard sketches. For example, anyone can order a pizza depicting the Russian President Mona Lisa, a dollar bill or other drawings. Such a culinary creation costs about $35-70 – everything depends on the complexity of the manufacturing. The work is certainly hard work, but the costs are self-evident. A large number of orders are coming!

Ultrasound for bullies

It’s no secret that adolescence can be a difficult time for teenagers. Men gather from time to time in courtyards, near shopping malls and other places where they laugh loudly, laugh loudly and sometimes smoke and drink. Howard Stapleton came up with a startup idea by which crowded places could be reliably protected from gangsters. He became the author of a unique device that could repel children using ultrasound waves.

The device is called a Mosquito, and it’s tuned to the frequencies of teenage hearing. The device emits a special ultrasonic signal that “cuts off” the teenager’s hearing, allowing them to leave. Interestingly, adults did not respond to these signals.

Anti-vandalism (as it is called today) has shown its effectiveness. The device is in high demand among various store owners who have repeatedly encountered rude behavior from teenagers.

Of course, the developers of the device are not saying that all teenagers are without exception gangsters. In order to appear attractive in the eyes of polite and collected teenagers, Stapleton implemented the entrepreneurial idea in a different way, creating a special mobile phone for students. When the phone rang, the students heard it, but the teacher didn’t.

Unique fire gadgets

Lil Chesley from the US decided to develop an innovative fire extinguishing device after encountering a common situation – his own house was on fire. Fortunately, everything ended safely and there were no casualties. Furthermore, it was the fire that spurred Chesley to realize a great entrepreneurial idea and become a successful businessman.

So, after a house fire, Lil began designing his own fire protection system. As a result, he managed to create a HotShot device powered by a mains supply. The mini fire extinguisher plugs into a special socket. If the sensor provided in the design detects a rise in temperature up to 250 degrees, it triggers a special canister that sprays foam to extinguish the fire.

Chesley recommends that all homeowners purchase such a system if the building is more than 20 years old. The price of HotShot will be several times less than a complete electrician replacement in your home. Equipment and installation cost around $1,000. While the system is not yet available for free, they plan to do so in the near future.

Best Russian Startup Ideas: 10 Success Stories

AeroState Map

Thanks to the innovative program, users around the world can control the state of the atmosphere of any subject. Innovation Development Center – Hazardous Emissions Map. Sources – Vehicles and companies, forests and fields that emit carbon dioxide at night.

With AeroState maps, air quality can be predicted. Information is taken from the server – the program collects the results of the interaction of air with hazardous substances.

-Kaberry

This is an app that combines all discount cards together. That is, it allows people to free up space in their wallets instead of wasting time looking for the right card. This application is created by Russian developers. Sync via Bluetooth. The program can use a reader to read information about any user’s discount card.

To pay at the checkout of the app, select the necessary card. Data is synchronized with a single electronic card. It can then be used as a discount. This entrepreneurial concept, successfully implemented in Russia, has gained many fans.

CardsMobile

For transactions, you can use smartphones, terminals supporting NFC technology. In Russia, it operates through e-wallet applications.

-CreoPop

The author of this device is a developer from Siberia. 3D pens use photopolymer ink that hardens in the air under the influence of UV rays. Then the drawing becomes a real object.

• fire chat

Easy to use messenger and social network in one. Information is transferred via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. In this case, the device transmits data to the gadget that is connected in a different way. For example, one can connect via Bluetooth and Wi-Fi at the same time, the second via Bluetooth, and the third via Wi-Fi. All three users can share data.

• Kerry Bloom

Kribrum is an idea implemented by a startup to create tools and analyze data from media. It uses the author’s personal linguistic characteristics, allowing to take into account the most nuances of phrase structure and determine how they are pronounced.

• LinguaLeo

LinguaLeo is an online service for learning foreign languages. Currently, it has 15 million users from countries such as Turkey, Russia, and Brazil. There are programs of its own that allow you to learn the language, as well as countless materials that you can master without access to the Internet.

• Market Mixer

A startup that allows you to sell through a warehouse that processes information individually. They can be successfully used by online stores and trading platforms. The system helps in processing supplier price lists and generating product lists for your store.

• Planner 5D

Architectural design applications. You can also design the interior before construction work begins. The service is simple and convenient, similar to the world-famous Sims game.

• Promotional robot

The startup is tasked with creating a robot for retail. The application recognizes a person’s speech and appearance. Meanwhile, the bot keeps the conversation going and answers the customer’s questions. That is, it becomes a standard sales assistant.

Ridiculous startup ideas that suddenly became popular
Of course, everyone has thought at least once about how many ridiculous ideas startups have implemented with considerable success. Let’s list these ideas, which at first glance seemed strange and hopeless, but in the end managed to conquer the world.

Know almost

The idea for the startup came from former Facebook* employees. They came up with a service where some users would ask things and others would answer. But essentially similar Internet resources already exist: Yahoo! and Google, http:// Answers.comand http://Ask.com _.

Quora has over 200,000 visitors per month. Preliminary estimates put the startup’s price tag at $50 million. The advantage of this service is that it allows you to find completely different information on any topic. The most active Quora authors have over 30,000 views per month and over 350,000 views per year.

Wikipedia

An online encyclopedia that anyone can tweak. Plus, there will be people doing fact-checking in their free time.

Twitter

The author of Startup Ideas is Jack Dorsey. When creating the service, he wanted to form a new social network, a vast social network where people could communicate like they were exchanging SMS or sending feeds to each other, just like in RSS.

instagram

Dorsey’s goal was to create a perfect service that would connect his phone with his friends’ phones. Many reputable media outlets are now quoting tweets from witnesses to this or that incident. Twitter also makes it easier for celebrity fans to follow their lives.

But a year later, the company was acquired by Facebook for a whopping $1 billion ( Instagram founder Kevin Systrom owned 40% of the shares, making him $400 million ), and everything changed dramatically. On the first day, the influx of users reached 25 million. Millions were added in the first month. Currently, one million users join the service every two weeks.

Pinterest

A service to save your favorite pictures. The point is that everyone can have a virtual cork board where they can put whatever they want. The service’s audience is primarily female.

According to preliminary figures, the tool is worth $2.5 billion. Pinterest now has 100 employees.

Quartet

From the beginning, “checking in” was considered a strange idea. But that changed with the advent of Likes and the ability to write comments and tips on a location and earn badges for it. In this case, gamification makes all the difference.

According to experts, the company is now worth about $600 million. In April this year, the founders attracted an additional $41 million in investment.

Zapos
The idea of ​​starting a business seemed destined to fail. The founder decided to sell shoes online. Despite the difficulty of guessing the exact size, the insoles that couldn’t be tried on, the huge variety of products that made it easy to get lost, and the three-day wait for orders, this startup has been incredibly successful!

5 Ways to Test the Potential of Your Startup Idea

“Mom Test”: Check-up by relatives and friends

When a businessman starts his own business, he certainly aims at success. But if you are not fully prepared, failure is inevitable. To minimize risk at least a little, don’t be lazy and test your ideas – from concept and initial resources to implementation and nuances. Check how creative and unique your idea is and how much potential it has. There are different ways to do this.

At first, you can simply interview relatives, friends, and acquaintances. This is called the “mom test.” It cannot be said that it gives 100% objective results as friends and family often flatter us to cheer us up. However, you should still test the idea this way. Maybe you’ll find some weaknesses in your project and improve them.

When talking to loved ones about your startup, formulate and ask the simplest and most understandable questions to get real answers. Focus on the gaps and flaws in the business idea and detail how your family and friends recommend dealing with them. The answers received are then analyzed in detail, selecting all the answers that are most important for the project. This way, you will better understand the perspective of the idea.

• Customer testing

When launching a new product or service, remember who your target audience is and what they want and need. There is a “Lean Startup” approach, created by American entrepreneur and business theorist Eric Ries. It allows you to check whether consumers are actually ready to buy your product.

Lean Startup is the concept of “lean” startup and development of businesses, which is based on the most prudent use of resources. In this case, when companies launch any new product, they take a scientific approach: they develop a hypothesis, test it on a small local audience or market share, and then evaluate the feedback and results. If the effect is positive, they start implementing the idea for startups, but on a larger scale.

Using this approach, businesses can design products and services that meet customer expectations and needs without requiring large upfront investments or expensive startups.

The spread of Internet technology eliminates the need to interview people on the street or go door to door. All you need to do is create a landing page (landing page) on the Internet and use the features of social networks, online groups, bulletin boards or marketplaces with your target audience.

• Oxygen, aspirin or gemstones

Another way to test the viability of your startup idea is with the help of a quick test developed by successful entrepreneur and Harvard Business School lecturer Janet Krause.

All you need to do is answer the main questions about your project: how irreplaceable it is and whether, in the eyes of your target audience, it is a product or service that would be difficult or impossible to live without. Traditionally, this verification method could be called “oxygen, aspirin, or jewelry.” Here you need to clearly understand the importance of future products:

If it cannot be replaced, it is oxygen ;
If it makes life easier or helps solve a problem – aspirin ;
If it’s more about pleasure or status – a gem .
Kraus believes that a successful business idea should contain all three aspects, as they will enable the business to grow steadily and steadily while generating revenue.

• Disney method

To evaluate a startup idea from all sides, you can use the “Disney Method,” which is based on three perspectives: dreamer, skeptic, and realist.

When developing new projects, the Disney team gradually moves from room to room, each with its own function:

The first room allowed the wildest fantasies to unfold;
the second aimed at creating detailed sketches of the incarnations of these fantasies;
Third , everything can be criticized harshly.
To successfully complete the project, the team can return to the previous room. The project is considered complete only when there are no more complaints about it in the critique room.

How to implement the Disney method in modern conditions? Replace the room with a piece of paper, a text editor, and, of course, access to all your intellectual potential.

• Edison method

After testing all the above methods and knowing all the pros and cons of the startup idea, try to perfect the project so that it has no flaws. The “Edison Method” works very well here. Because every failed test can provide a lot to think about, the first step in testing a startup idea is to refine it to make it 100% suitable.

When Edison was asked what the secret of his success was, he said he was improving the product until it began to “work on its own.” This is the essence of the method.

How to implement an idea for a startup: 6 steps

Stage 1 – Choose a location

The World Wide Web is blurring the lines, and that’s good. But only to those whose projects have paid off. If you’re just implementing a startup, be prepared for a long road. Presentations and negotiations must be attended in person. Therefore, it is necessary to go to designated places with business incubators, accelerators, technology parks, etc.

In the United States, these are Chicago, Boston, Los Angeles, Seattle, Silicon Valley, and almost everyone has a startup demo.

In the small Canadian town of Waterloo, BlackBerry is struggling to survive and a host of young competitors are growing up, many of them related to it.

In Germany, Berlin.

In India – Bangalore, the analogue of Silicon Valley. Investors themselves come to this place from different parts of the planet to take advantage of high-quality Indian startups.

In Russia, this is Moscow and especially Skolkovo. The Russian capital also has famous accelerators and venture funds: IIDF, GenerationS, Farminers. You can also mention Kazan, where the Pulsar Venture accelerator is located, and St. Petersburg, where iDealMachine is located.

Stage 2 – Select Assistant

At first glance, it may seem like there are many ideas for starting a business, but not enough money to implement them. In fact, there is nowhere to invest. Interest rates from verified banks are zero. In stocks, there is a lot of risk when the level of income is not very high. But a quality startup can generate up to 1000% annual returns. There will be no end to people wanting to help.

FFF – From Family, Friends, Fools (Family, Friends, Fools). It helps in the beginning because of family ties, shared memories or belief in success.
Business incubator . If the idea of ​​​​starting a business seems interesting, the incubator will provide space, office equipment and other necessary things for a small fee or participation in the project.

accelerator . It is a business incubator with training and supervision functions. Accelerators work hard to perfect a project so investors will love it. Next, you need to sell it. If a business angel thinks the project has promise, he will buy a portion from the accelerator. Accelerators and business angels are not that different from each other, but usually the latter are more picky.

Venture funds . He will provide the first large tranches of funding. But he may refuse. The fund will invest millions of dollars to implement your idea only if the process has already started and is developing rapidly.

Stage 3 – Answer the questions

This phase will be repeated over and over again, from one investor to the next. It’s most error-prone, so first you’ll need to answer some questions yourself.

Does anyone need your product? Since no one needed the product, most projects were closed.
Is it a venture? If we talk about 25% per year, investors would rather buy a pub in Prague. A start-up only piques his interest if it can bring tenfold profits in the short term. This is what entrepreneurship is about: big risk, big reward.

Do you have something to show? Investors are interested in an MVP (minimum viable product) – a product that can be sold immediately, even in raw form.
Can you scale quickly? To achieve 10x growth in the shortest possible time, businesses must scale quickly. It would take a year and a billion to open another hundred bars. Enable new distribution channels for apps –

one week and one million. What’s more profitable?

Is there a competitive advantage? Creating the same Instagram but with a blue and blue design is a step that no one will appreciate. Follow investors’ advice – look for consumer problems and find out what they are lacking in solving specific problems.
Is this a seasonal business? On December 31, millions of people will download an app that lets you call Santa and the Snow Maiden. Then what?
Stage 4 – Registration
Potential startup founders discussing their ideas over a cup of coffee often overlook the fact that it will still turn into a standard LLC, or CJSC, where there will be a staffing table and tax returns will have to be filed. . It can also be GmbH, Ltd, LLC, SRL – it all depends on the country. So it would be interesting for any investor to see at least the basic documents.

Confirm the existence of the legal entity

In this case we are talking about the articles of association, memorandum of association, extracts from the Unified State Register of legal entities and certificate of registration. The entire process of investing in a startup involves the transfer of shares from one person to another. Investors need to ensure that any nuances in the design of the legal entity do not stand in the way.

• Intellectual property registration

No matter what you come up with, you’ll need to patent your invention before you can sell it. All ideas for starting a business must be formalized.

Stage 5 – Collection

• Pre-seed stage

There was a team, a working prototype, first customers, but no funding to fully launch the project. At this stage, it’s best to turn to the three F’s (which we’ve written about before) or bootstrap – look for savings, mortgage real estate, etc. Here, investors only back very promising projects. The amount of investment usually ranges from 1-1.5 million rubles.

• Seed stage

You’ve submitted your rights, researched the market, graphed growth in Excel, and performed economic calculations. At this stage, you can involve accelerators or business angels to collaborate. The founder’s main mistake here is being unreasonably generous out of fear of not realizing the project. If you give 1/3 of the company to a random investor, with subsequent investments, others will own more than 50%. And according to venture funds, if a startup has a small stake, it will lose momentum. Such startups are not willing to help financially.

• Series A

The startup is 1-2 years old, good unit economics (revenue per customer – revenue), continued growth, and prospects for further development are visible. At this stage, the accelerator or business angel is ready to sell their stake to a venture fund. Therefore, negotiations are ongoing with a serious investor who will invest 50 to 100 million rubles in the project.

• Round B

Things are going so well that investors are proposing to seriously scale up the project and take it to international markets. Here, approximately 1 billion rubles can be provided for development.

• Initial public offering

Every startup and investor secretly dreams of this, and in fact, it all started for this. We are talking about the launch of company shares into free float. You won’t be able to complete the process quickly. We need transparency and good reporting. But on the stock exchange, your shares will be valued in financial terms and can be instantly converted into currency. It is important to provide appropriate instructions to your broker.

after all for this stage it all started?

Stage 6 – Growth Technologies
This project can be started even if all you have is an old laptop and cell phone. But they must be equipped with something new that will help increase their chances of success. For example, we can talk about new IT created specifically for start-ups. Even if you know nothing about such technologies, chances are your competitors already have them.

• VTsOD

A virtual data processing and storage center is where you rent capacity from a cloud service and then create virtual machines with up to 16 cores. This service is provided by Rostelecom. It allows you to rent the capacity of the national cloud platform. For example, as site traffic grows, it can be scaled very quickly without the need for technical support.

• Virtual PBX

If the activation is associated with many incoming calls, multiple lines are required. And you won’t be able to buy them individually – that will take up the entire Series B portion. But at the same time, a virtual PBX will provide many lines and internal number of users on one city number. Again, there’s zoom.

• VPN with DDoS protection

VPN stands for Virtual Private Network – Virtual Private Network. In other words, instead of running cables around your office, you rent a virtual server and work from it. Rostelecom also protects tenants from DDoS attacks, during which hackers overload servers with requests, blocking everyone from entering.

• Virtual Contact Center

Rather than renting a semi-basement for the price of a royal suite in a luxury hotel and arranging an operator there, order the services that come with Rostelecom’s Virtual PBX. Within days, you’ll be deploying a contact center of any size. No need to buy new equipment to manage it remotely.

• Online video conferencing

If at the end of any meeting with partners and investors you always celebrate the agreement at the buffet table and drink until morning, you are putting your business at risk. It is better to connect to the Internet in Rostelecom and unite all participants in a video conference without having to download new software. It doesn’t matter what browser someone has here.

failed business ideas

2016, IT company Alphabet (Google) announced its intention to close the Revolv division, which created a center for smart home products. Revolv users can control all the “smart” electronics in their home – including light bulbs and electric kettles.

But then business owners decided the direction didn’t make sense, and on May 15, 2016, all owners of the $299 device were disconnected from the system. The company promised to consider how buyers can get their money back. Alphabet and its subsidiary Nest did not disclose any details about their decision.

Yeah no
Thanks to the YayNay app, smartphone users can compare anything to anything. One person uploads a photo and others rate it by pressing the “Yes” or “No” button. The service was shut down in 2014. The main reason is that developers cannot properly control the content posted by users.

Developers of the project revealed that users began uploading more than just innocuous photos of hairstyles, shoes, and cars. Thus, a user asked to rate candid photos of teenagers was discovered.

There are other reasons, such as slow user growth. As a result, project leaders decided there was no need to solve a problem they had not foreseen in the first place. It’s better to just disable the service and remove it from the app store.

radio

In 2015, Rdio, one of the earliest music streaming services, also ceased to exist. It was developed by the former Skype team. Users love this service. In their opinion, the application has a high-quality interface and provides good user interaction.

According to journalists, the difficulty is that the company puts everything on the product, has almost no promotional services and does not pay attention to the marketing part. The service was well established but was overtaken by rivals like Spotify and Apple Music that generated more media buzz. Additionally, you have to pay to use Rdio, and the app doesn’t attract a large audience.

How to protect your startup idea and not become a victim of theft
You can often hear from some experts in the field that no one steals an idea because it is useless. But let’s think about it. There are now many examples of successful “copy” projects that can make you a lot of money because they are relevant. But of course, it’s not the people who borrow the idea to launch startups who get paid.

In real life, startup ideas do get stolen because they are profitable. For example, you can adopt the same “Odnoklassniki” or “VKontakte” – analogues of Western social networks. Today these sites are operating successfully, although their implementation concepts are borrowed. Many cars are copies of other cars (especially Asian shipping), but that doesn’t stop distributors from making money on these cars. The advantage of the machine may be price or other aspects.

Can all business ideas really be stolen? Alas, most projects on the modern market are nothing special and outstanding. But you can still bring something new to life while implementing an existing project.

Some people think investors can steal startup ideas. But this is almost impossible. There is no benefit to investors pitching an idea to another team and investing money haphazardly. Of course, investors should be very cautious in their choices. Find out in advance what projects he has funded and what his reputation is. If you take this seriously, you can’t be afraid of difficulties. Of course, don’t forget to sign a confidentiality agreement.

But for competitors, the story is different. They should be afraid. Even if you think there will be no analogues for future products, don’t relax. You still run the risk of crossing someone’s path.

Any potential project is based on an idea.

Any potential project is based on an idea. Many people had great ideas, often at the same time, and because of this, true authorship is harder to determine. Only competent writers can turn entrepreneurial ideas into high-quality projects. The author must understand not only how best to implement the idea, but also how to protect it from competitors. There’s an argument to be made that there are no moral or legal barriers to stealing an idea. But that doesn’t mean you can’t protect yourself.

The most effective protection option is efficiency. The whole point of entrepreneurship is to quickly implement an idea that delivers great results. This is what differentiates a startup from a simple entrepreneurial activity. How quickly an idea is implemented depends on the expertise of its implementer. If you implement the project in the shortest possible time, you will significantly reduce the risk of plagiarism. Thieves or competitors simply don’t have the time to keep track of all stages of project formation and development. In this case, they will make mistakes one after another.

There is another way to protect your ideas from unfairness. Remember the story of Uncle Remus, the Brer Rabbit who allowed the Brer Fox who caught him to do whatever he wanted to him, “just don’t throw it into that thorn bush!”. Brell rabbits live in thorn bushes. Startup authors use the exact same tactic to reveal details of their projects to potentially unreliable people.

But this method of preventing theft is indirect, because the mind itself is not material and therefore cannot be touched. How to protect yourself more seriously? There are several effective methods. For example, you can:

By describing the startup idea on paper . When you certify and record the date, you can do this through a notary. If the idea is stolen, you will submit this paper to the court as proof of your authorship;

Publish in print media or on a dedicated website

. If you post an idea on your blog, it will not be considered evidence;
Write a registered letter on your behalf and describe the idea in it. You may only open such a letter once, for example, as part of a court trial;
Patented or registered copyright . This method is used only if the idea has any form provided for by the current laws of the Russian Federation. For example, it can be an invention, computer program, selection method or achievement, production secret, etc.;
Drafting a gentleman’s agreement – concluded between the partners and investors of the startup. The only drawback is that such an agreement is made orally and has no legal effect;
Create a confidentiality agreement . This document is drafted in writing and sets out all the details of the interaction between the company’s partners and investors. Such an agreement is a strong confirmation of the correctness of resolving disputes in court.

A business idea can pop up and bring you unprecedented fame. But there’s always risk—even the most seemingly unique and incredible ideas may be doomed to failure. To prevent this from happening, remember the basic principles and rules, don’t be afraid to discover new things, luck will not keep you waiting.