If you put a cake in the oven before you've mixed the wet and dry ingredients, you don't get a cake. You get a baked egg sitting on top of a bunch of burnt flour and sugar. The same is true of entrepreneurship: things have an order they ought to occur in for maximal chances of success. Many startups make the mistake of putting the cart before the horse, which leads to their demise.
"There's no use in hiring a Vice President of Marketing if you don't have any customers to market to yet."
The graphic below is meant to illustrate the basic steps in the process, which we'll discuss in more detail below.
Each step is represented by a circular arrow because there is no one point of being 'done' with any of them. While validating, you may realize your vision needs to be adjusted. Each step is iterative; different steps of the process will have radically different timelines for different projects.
Vision is the process of determining what your product or service is meant to accomplish for your customers.
Validation is the process of determining whether your vision for the business is:
The vertical line in the middle is the point at which a project stops being just a concept and becomes a venture. (Many people are in a rush to get over this line, which can be a big mistake.)
Customer Growth is where the vision becomes "real" in that somebody is buying from you. You want to turn that somebody into lots of somebodies. This is important from a revenue standpoint, but also because it lends credence to your ideas (continued validation.)
Company is wayyyy over on the right side of the graphic, which may be surprising. But it's intentional. It's fun to make things official; to hire people and rent an office and do all the things you feel like 'real companies' do. But as we said at the outset of this page,
<aside> ⛔ Lots of companies tank themselves by trying to move to the steps of customer growth and company before they've properly validated their vision.
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Now that we understand the importance of moving in the right order, this page can serve as a quasi- table of contents. Below, you can explore topics by the part of the entrepreneurial process they fall under. While topics do not need to be read in the order in which they appear, you might find it helpful.