I recently added a couple of podcasts from the iTunes U wondering what kind of information I can expect from educational podcasts. One of them is from the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute (Feed Link) and as the name of the Institute may indicate it is about entrepreneurship. I startet listening to the first few episodes which are mostly live recordings from speeches of successful entrepreneurs  at the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute. I didn’t expect too much of it so I was really surprised how interesting and fascinating these speeches were.I heard the story of Bear Naked, a nutrition company founded by two young people who absolutely believed in the idea of producing natural and yet tasty products like granola. They gave up everything for this idea. They moved back to their parents and (re)invested all their money in the company. Although they saw a fair in chance in that venture they didn’t aim to build a multi dollar enterprise from the very beginning. After five or six years (as far as I remember), though, they sold it for more than 50 million dollars. They reached this goal with a total commitment to the product. A typical story of entrepreneurs having the right idea and the right attitude – and maybe a little luck.

In another episode a guy told a short story about his friend who launched a web site called diapers.com. Who ever had recently followed the news would know that this was a very successful startup sold to amazon for several hundreds of million dollars. He didn’t launch it because he had the better diapers. Neither are diapers a very cool product. But he saw the economic chance in selling ordinary diapers a little cheaper than others do. So his idea was making common processes more efficient and every day products more inexpensive. So the right idea does not necessarily have to be a product which will convince in every single nuance. Although this sort of startup is more or less reserved for people with a certain insight into the corresponding industry and processes, this is not an indispensable must. There are several examples of people who offer every day products a little cheaper than others do and made a fortune with it (or at least a good deal of money). I call this type of entrepreneurs the economists. They think in economic patterns looking for the possibility to improve established processes. The product is secondary. The other sort of entrepreneurs I call the idealists. They see a problem and want to “help” in a way. So maybe, when thinking of new ideas for a venture, think in both directions.

This is a guest post by Markus who is an aspiring web-entrepreneur. He currently runs Haushaltsreport (www.haushaltsreport.de) and Wishsite (www.wishsite.de).

Filed under: General by Stefan
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