The New Business Road Test

By about interview number 20, in my experience, you’ll have heard virtually everything there is to hear. It’s time to stop, draw your conclusions and get on with the rest of your seven domains analysis.

The customer … is the ultimate reason for whatever the organization produces. Peter Drucker1

How large is this segment, and how fast is it growing?

An industry consists of sellers – typically organisations – that offer products or classes of products that are similar and close substitutes for one another.

good luck can help a new venture, but those best prepared to take advantage of good luck are those whose leading-edge information connections enable them to respond to market changes quickly and adroitly.

Schultz was happy bringing on ‘people smarter than me’ and letting them do what they’d been hired to do. As Schultz puts it: “There’s a common mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make. They own the idea, and they have the passion to pursue it. But they can’t possibly possess all the skills needed to make the idea actually happen. Reluctant to delegate,

Often the key for lifestyle entrepreneurs or those of modest aspirations is to fly below the competitors’ radar, serving niche markets having unique needs that an attentive entrepreneur can understand and appreciate. In such niches an entrepreneur’s ability to tailor what’s offered and serve customers exceptionally well can build loyalty that’s dif

Are these benefits, in the customers’ minds, different from and superior in some way – better, faster, cheaper or whatever – to what’s currently offered by other solutions? Differentiation is crucial. With the possible exception of niche markets in which small entrants can safely fly ‘below the radar’ of competitors, the vast majority of me-too pro

an abundance of primary data – from interviews, observation, surveys of prospective customers and/or industry participants, or market experiments – are necessary for the two micro-level assessments making up the lower row in the model and for understanding the industry’s critical success factors. So, build a simple mockup or prototype, pick up the

Then there’s the question of how long you want to manage or lead your business. Do you want to stay the course for many years to build your business yourself? Or are you happy to get it started, exit early if possible and move on to something else? Is it creating, i.e. the early-stage work, or the managing, i.e. the later-stage work, that turns you