2.  Find A Problem And Solve It.  Problem solving is the key to good business, and it is problem solving that brings value to others, hence why solving a problem, hopefully a big problem, is always than ideas and dreaming.  Finding problems to solve is a good first step and then coming up with innovative ways to solve them should be next.  A startup can only be successful when it solves a real problem. 

3. Be Evolutionary.  A question you need to ask yourself is; why is this business model unique – what makes it different?  A successful business should be evolutionary, which is actually better than revolutionary.  It is very important to understand the difference.  I will write on this subject separately in the future but for now know that the best business ideas are evolutionary ideas – they take it to the next level.

4.  Focus On Technology.  Advances in technology usually create new entrepreneurial opportunities.  Keep your eye on the latest trends and be prepared to act on new technology.  Many successful entrepreneurs recognize emerging consumer needs and develop new market opportunities.
The iPhone and iPad are great examples of this – they have created new markets for thousands of “app’ developers and accessory manufacturers.

5.  Don’t try to do it by yourself.  Get people around you that you trust and will offer you support.  Collaborate with other smart people and entrepreneurs that have experience.  If they have succeeded, they have probably also failed and know what steps to take and what to avoid.

6.  Pay Attention To Your Corporate Culture.  Make your business and doing business with you fun.  Start-ups are hard work, but should also be fun.  Surround yourself with people that are passionate, positive, and have fun working with you.  Start off with a good team and pick people who share your vision and ideas and are committed to seeing your venture through.

7.  Learn To Lead.  Lead by example by driving the business and creation process with your knowledge and hard work.  Your communication with the rest of the team and your focus and hard work will inspire the others.  The business environment is constantly changing, but the leadership component remains steadfast.  It’s also important to identify and develop leaders in the organization.  The success of this leadership has a direct impact on a company’s future.

8.  Don’t Repeat Mistakes.  To be a successful entrepreneur you need to expect and accept mistakes. You shouldn’t go out of your way to make them, but sometimes it takes mistakes to succeed.  Mistakes here and there are ok, as long as they are not often and you learn from them.  The worst mistake is the one that gets repeated.  Surrounding yourself with people that have already made these mistakes can give you a huge advantage.

9.  Understand your market.  Competitiveness today is no longer defined by the quality of your product or offer.   Although quality is still desirable, more importantly it’s how it meets the needs of your market or how it effectively solves your problems.  You also have to have the ability to adapt quickly.  If you aren’t able to adapt to market changes and innovations, someone else will.   

10.  Delegate.  Don’t try to do everything yourself or even a little bit of everything.  Have the people you hire specialize in certain tasks so you can focus on what you do best. By specializing in tasks you will be more efficient and get more done.  There's no question that delegation is a skill that's critical to business success and any kind of life outside of the office.

11.  Manage Risk.  You need to know just how much you can afford to risk.  Also get a good idea of how likely you are to lose it.  If you can’t bear the idea of losing it, the risk is too great.  An entrepreneur has to be willing to accept pretty big risks, with some comfort level.  Manage your finances well and pay yourself and your team just enough to get by until you have established a stronger financial position.  This also shows investors that their money is being managed wisely and you are worth the risk.

12.  Stay Cool. Things go wrong when you run a business, and you have to be able to keep calm in any situation.  While it can happen to the best of us, keeping your cool will make it easier to find success, and keeps everybody focused on the task at hand.

13.  Focus On Distribution.  While having a great product or service is important, if you can’t get it into the hands of people to use, it’s useless.  Distribution should be a key objective in any startup business.  This is where a mentor can be very valuable to have.  If you don’t have the means to get your product or service to the masses, find someone that does.

14.  Innovate In Increments.  Too often we think we have to improve in a dramatic fashion.  All it really takes is consistent, incremental improvements.  Try to do something better each day, and you will find that these small improvements compound in a big way over time.  Following this rule will not only improve your chances of success in business, but many aspects of your life.

15.  Time Is Money.  Yes, that’s right I said it, but it’s certainly true.  The world has changed and business and technology moves faster then ever, so the faster you can adapt to your market and develop new products and serves, the greater your chances for success. It takes a strong work ethic and a lot of time to get a business off the ground.  It will take you a lot of time and focus, but remember to manage your time wisely.

Please feel free to comment or add any other suggestions below.  Thanks.

Consider that the cellphone, which used to be a bulky brick  in the early nineties, is now a small, cheap, portable multimedia computer.   It's pretty much lost the focus of it's original functionality, i.e. making a phone call.

Technology has changed not only the way we live, but also the way we start businesses. Gone are the days where you need lots of money to start a business (although it helps).  Now, you just need a good idea, a computer with an internet connection, and the courage to quit your job.  Here are some of my thoughts about this recent phenomenon.

1. More and more people are joining the start-up bandwagon.
This reminds me of the California Gold Rush. Everybody is rushing in to cash in on what the web has to offer. Start-ups are  growing at an unprecedented rate. This phenomenon is no longer true just in North America. It has spread to Europe and the rest of the world. Who wouldn't take this opportunity?  It’s cheap, can be done from home at night, and it’s easy.  Starting a startup is easy compared to having a 9 to 5 job.  In a start-up, you have to manage many problems, but you don't have that feeling that your life is passing by aimlessly as it does when working with a bigger company. In addition, in a start-up you have the potential of making more money. What is more amazing is that, as more and more young people begin to realize that a startup has more potential than pursuing a career, they are aligning their career path towards joining the startup bandwagon.

2. Fiercer competition is the result.
When more people join the bandwagon, this creates more competitors, and that means competition is fiercer than ever. Everybody wants to get a piece of the pie. It is cheaper, easier, and more accessible then ever before. It follows that many will attempt to copy you, and package an offer better or cheaper than yours.  You can't be complacent however.  If you play your cards right, you can still be successful.  Start-ups can no longer afford to sit on their idea because others are most likely contemplating of doing something similar.  New products and services are being created at an unprecedented scale. You snooze, you lose.

3. Younger people are getting more involved.
There are some great examples that act as role models for young people.   Bill Gates and Steve Jobs built their empire from a garage when they were in their early 20s. Surely, this is still possible.. isn't it?    Look at Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerburg, he's the world's youngest billionaire – created just a few years ago from what was once his high school yearbook concept!!  The formula is simple: an idea and technical competencies, plus a little investment and management know-how, and almost anyone can start a web business.  Another advancement I recognize, is that while funding used to be very difficult to get,  funding is now easier than ever.   Instead of convincing a VC to give you funding,  more and more people launch their company using a little seed money pooled from co-founders, or a local business incubator. Bootstrapping works, and after that if you do your job right you may have VC's courting you in no time.

4. More start-ups mean faster innovation. And more of it.
Nobody seems to have exclusive technology anymore. A mere press release of a new technology can immediately spin others to release their own "version".  It's a race. This is good and bad news depending who you are, but it will definitely result in more choices for consumers. Apparently, this trend is a direct result of the start-ups sprouting up everywhere. More start-ups mean more technology, even if a lot of is copy cat stuff.  Look at Groupon, who recently turned down a $6 Billion dollar offer from Google. The same "technology" is available for a few hundred bucks to anyone who looks for it today, and has been for a while. This growth and spread of technology is amazing and unstoppable.

When Apple released the iPad last year, it finally ushered in the era of tablet computing, and almost simultaneously, other big players in the smart phone industry started releasing their own versions or tablet prototypes.  All competing for the same market, offering the same concept, the differentiation is really only in the software, which so far Apple is winning.  In the end, consumers decide who is the winner – which hasn't changed much over the years. We are witnessing new ideas coming online at an unbelievable pace – it seems as if many companies are building and working on the same ideas at once.  To some, this environment is an opportunity for collaboration, while for others, it means finding a better way to do things. Going back to the tablet, did you notice how the giant phone companies started collaborating in order to get a chunk of the market?  Technology and collaboration is evolving faster than ever, and you can't do anything about it,  so enjoy the ride.  The future looks very promising if you have what it takes, which will be the subject of another article.

Whats does all this mean?

A lot.   The number of web start-ups is going to continue to grow exponentially.  This growth is obviously due to the rapid proliferation of computers and the net.  The time to take advantage of these changes is now – it is a very unique opportunity.

At Idea Partnership, we perfect the launch process everytime we back a new startup. In the end however, the ultimate measure of success is not what you do, but how well a start-up performs, and how it delivers on its promises to its customers.  These are exciting times…

Follow James on Twitter: twitter.com/jamesborzilleri

Most mentors have started up their own businesses in the past and were successful in doing so. Because of their experience and success they are perfect to give advice, especially when it is in the same field as their past endeavors. Many entrepreneurs that are starting a business for the first time learn from trial and error. This process of learning takes a long time and can be very expensive. Many mentors have already made mistakes and learned from them. This experience and knowledge can jump-start a young startup and save them from making the same mistakes. Many young startups learn on their own, but the learning process with a mentor will save a lot of time and money, and can be the difference in whether the startup succeeds or not.

A mentor is also a source of support, who understands the daily challenges of a new business. Having a mentor can keep the entrepreneur on the right path and feel less isolated. It is sometimes easy for a startup to get frustrated and having somebody helping that has been through these challenges before can be a tremendous relief.

Once the business is off the ground and running, the next big challenge can be getting your product/service out there for businesses and consumers to use. Chances are the mentor has contacts, distribution, and relationships that will accelerate this process in a big way. The value of this can be enormous and can take years to acquire by yourself. Most mentors are doing it because they love starting a business and that is probably one thing that contributed to their own success. They know what it takes, have the right personality for it, and are willing to pass this knowledge on to someone else.

The mentors at Idea Partnership of Utah have started their own ventures in the past and have been successful in doing so. They act as a support process for entrepreneurs and spend a lot of their time working with start-ups. Idea Partnership of Utah specializes in web-based and software companies and has a lot to offer start-ups. Its mentors have the right contacts, distribution, relationships, know-how, and personalities to accelerate a company to success.

With the economy still trying to recover, there are a great number of ideas and start-up companies that are having trouble receiving funding from investors. “Utah is well known for having a strong entrepreneurial base and we are excited to see the wide array of startups that are coming out of the rocky mountain region. Our region is the fastest growing region in population and economic gross domestic product,” said the CEO of Idea Partnership of Utah, James Borzilleri.

Young companies that start out with a business incubator can have an immense advantage over companies that start out on their own. Over 80% of companies that start through an incubator are still in operation – an impressive statistic.

This new business incubator prides itself on the business expertise and mentoring aspect of its incubator. James Borzilleri stated “I strongly believe that mentoring can be more valuable than capital”.

Idea Partnership of Utah is made up of internet savvy leadership, focused on internet technology and SaaS software companies. “Our goal is to produce successful companies that will leave the program growing and financially stable,” said Shawn Smith who is an analyst with the company.

We are entrepreneurs helping other entrepreneurs,” explained James Borzilleri who has been an entrepreneur for over 20 years and has launched many successful companies. He went on to say “building a business is a lot of fun, we love what we are doing here, it's a way of giving back”

State residents like to see programs like Idea Partnership of Utah. Besides the benefits for the entrepreneur, the relationship helps the local economy. Programs like business incubation promote business growth and jobs, and are a perfect way to revitalize a community in a down economy.

For more information on business incubation and Idea Partnership of Utah, go to:

http://www.ideapartnerhip.com