From 10 Ways for Entrepreneurs and Startups to Research for Success on North Bay Startup:
Research, research, research! If there’s anything I’ve learned in years of doing business, it’s this: you can’t be too well-informed, but you can certainly be ill-informed!
Many experts will tell you that your main focus when thinking of starting a business should be to write a business plan, which in many cases consists of meticulous number crunching and analysis of your competition. Balderdash! I subscribe to the 37signals’ “Rework” philosophy that planning is guessing, so that’s a whole lot of work based on a whole lot of guessing. And reality trumps guessing every time.
So what do I mean when I talk about research? Here’s what I mean:
Research your community and your world!
In the fine blogging tradition of posting lists, here’s my Top 10 list of what you should do as you conduct research for your startup…