Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

I have!  I thought this would be an interesting topic for people to chime in with their opinions...

The dream of starting a company is to make it successful in a short period of time with a small budget.  The question is:  Is this possible?

Well, my company was started in two week`s time with a $500 budget (the goal was one, but we dragged it out to two before we launched..   give me a break, ok!?).   I can`t say that the goal is possible, though, because we are not quite at the point where I can call us "successful".

The center of the conversation that I`m posing should be whether or not it`s possible, or even a good idea, to start a  company in one week with a $500 dollar budget.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts!

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Frank Astor
Co-Founder of TheWeblogWire.com

I surely do believe its possible. And it could be profitable to boot! You just need to decide HOW profitable it will be. Are you selling products? (drop ship, wholesale, hand made). Are you providing access to exclusive information, interactivity or services? (i.e. games, content, contact lists etc)

it just depends on the company and it purpose.

Can you give some details?

A breakdown of where money and time were spent would be helpful to grasp the significance (and repeatability) of your accomplishment.

When the clock started was there nothing coded?

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Steve, you show what type "personality" style you are ... in attempting to analyze the question and provide a quantatative answer. Thats cool ... but I think the question was designed to be more rhetorical ...

Although the question might seem rhetorical, I was actually interested in people`s responses to the question.  I wanted to know what others thought of such a strategy and if they had done something similar in the past.

Steve, our situation was somewhat favorable because one of my partners is a web designer with his own design company.  Not only did that help in the planning of the project itself, but also took care of the design and navigability of the site.  The $500 was used to pay for coding.  An agreement was reached with a programmer who was familiar to us for him to apply code to the HTML.  When the clock started, there was no code.  As for the server, our partner at the design studio had a couple of servers that he was already paying for.  We used his.  As far as marketing and promotion goes, we used the $500 challenge as a public relations story for people to pick up on.  We put the story from our company blog on digg.com and it reached the front page, getting us much needed attention.  Soon after that, some contacts of ours in silicon valley helped us spread the word in that community and also amongst the bloggers.  Once bloggers picked up on it, news of the service spread like wildfire (one of the most valuable reasons why blogs are so important in a company`s PR plans).  The fact that our company was successfully promoted and written about by bloggers only strengthens and proves the value of the service that our company provides: connecting companies and their public relations efforts with the blogging community through our niche newswire which is specifically catered to bloggers.

To be fair, we actually took two weeks from the minute the idea was conceived to launch.  Still, the concept of starting a business with a minimal budget in a short period of time is definitally possible.  It helps to have connections with people who are in a position to help you at little or no cost.  The unknown (at least in my case) is whether the company can grow to be successful.  My company is growing steadily and has progressed a lot, but it has a long way to go before I can call it a success.

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Frank Astor
Co-Founder of TheWeblogWire.com

Greetings everyone!  Frank, as far as the logistics of setting up a site in a week, I would recommend OSCommerce (CREloaded) http://creloaded.com/ is a wonderful free turnkey application that allows you to start selling right away.  With some basic knowledge of graphic design and PHP you can have your site customized in no time.  Its as easy as point in click, takes care of your showcase, shopping cart, sales, invoices, packaging slips, inventory, and communications with your customers. 

SugarCRM http://www.sugarcrm.com/crm/ is a wonderful open source Customer Resource Management application, in one central location all of your employees have access to customer information, sales leads, calendars, groupware apps, integrated email with your site, tasks, and projects.

I wish you the best of luck with your business!

 

I`ve been looking for a CRM system, thanks for that link!

Well,

       Starting with $500 isnt that important , what matters is how good the idea is , i guess ,3 things important for running a good online business is ,idea ,sales letter and offcourse marketing .Now each one of this can be divided into many sub parts but sometimes it doesnt matter what you are selling (offcourse if you want to make wuick and short time money) 

what matters is how good your marketing strategies are.I really liked francis links .thanx