What is the most important factor to start your own company successfully – marketing or luck?

A reader wrote to me: “What is the most important factor to start your own company successfully – marketing or luck? Please advise.

Answer: As I have written in previous article, the most important factor in starting your own company is to have customers who are willing to pay for whatever you sell. Having customer is everything. Even if your product is not very good, you can improve it later. Having the best product but no customer is a waste of efforts and the way to file for bankruptcy. Of course, marketing and advertising are important but if you already have a lot of customers then why bother? Steve Jobs said: “I never listen to advertising consultants or market research people. I focus on create the best products that people are willing to pay.” He was right because you only need marketing and advertising when you need customers. In my opinion, having customer is everything and satisfies customers are the key to stay in business.

Starting a company has nothing to do with luck. Some people believe that luck determines everything. If they fail, they say that they are not lucky. My question is if you have luck, do you need to have a good idea? Do you need to have good product? or do you need marketing? You only need to be lucky then everything will happen as you wish. If you know that you are lucky then why bother to start a company? All you have to do is to buy lottery ticket or invest in the stock market. It is easier and with less effort than starting a company.

Some people start their own company with a single goal of making money. Most of them failed because they do not have the passion for what they do. When they face obstacles, they quit. When they have to work hard, they quit. When thing does not happen as they want, they quit. These people believe that starting a company is like buying a lottery ticket. If they make money, they also quit so they can go and enjoy. They do not love their work or passionate about their idea. They only dream of having money.

To start a company, you must begin with what you believe in and have passion for the work you do. If you do not have passion for your work, people will notice and will not take you seriously. Without passion it is impossible to convince other people to believe in your idea. Passion motivates people, partners, investors and customers. People always notice passionate people – People who really care about their product and their ideas. If you watch Steve Jobs’ talk about Apple products, you will notice his passion. He never mentioned money, being rich but only in making a difference – that is passion. If you watch Bill Gates’ talk about Microsoft and how to put a computer in very home in the U.S, you can feel his passion. If you watch Mark Zuckerberg talk about connecting people together, hundred thousand or million people all connected through Facebook. That is passion.

If you agree that working 80 hours to 120 hours a weeks for a year with no salary (You work for yourself) is needed to start your own company then you should do it. If you are excited in doing what you love then building your own company is the right thing to do. Even you may not succeed; you will learn more from it. If you fail, you will start another company again. With passion and determination, you have the right attitude to start your own company.

Several years ago, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the two founders of Microsoft, often skipped classes in high school to go to University of Washington to learn computer programming. They used “Fake” student cards to sit in computer classes and accessed to school’s computer systems. They got caught but the professor let them go because they were only 16 years old. They continued to do it again until they convinced the professor that they love programming and wanted to learn. Finally, the professor made exception to allow two high school students to stay in his class and used university’s computer. Today, many students skip class; go to internet cafe to use chat room, play video games, and then dream of being movie stars. Skip class to learn new technology or new programming language is definitely not on their mind.

It was the passion for programming that drove Bill Gates and Paul Allen to do what they did when they were young. If they think about making money, they probably would never create Microsoft. Bill probably stays in Harvard’s Laws school and Paul probably became a rock musician (You probably do not know that Paul Allen was a rock musician who played guitar in a local rock band).

If you do not have a passion for something, you cannot do it well. Few years ago, a journalist asked Steve Jobs: “Why working hard when you have so much money?” Steve said: “Money never excites me but the journey, the excitement of creating an elegant product drive me. I would work for free just to enjoy it.”

Bill Gate and Paul Allen started Microsoft with a single idea of develop programming language to Altair Computer. They worked nights and days for months to build the product. Altair Computer did not like their idea and refused to buy the program that they created. Without customer, the company of six people was almost bankrupt when Bill Gates heard that IBM was also building another computer to compete with Apple. He approached IBM to sell his product. IBM refused to see him four times but Bill still insisted to meet with IBM management. The fifth time, IBM said that they did not need a language compiler but an operating system. Bill did not have an operating system but he knew that one of his friends in Seattle had written one. He went back to Seattle to purchase that operating system for few thousand dollars then sold it to IBM as PC-DOS for much higher price.

Bill and Paul improved the operating system and created MS-DOS to compete with the previous version PC-DOS that they sold to IBM. Because MS- DOS was better than PC-DOS, many customers preferred it over the IBM’s product then overtime, Microsoft captured the market. As they built their reputation as a solid, reliable company with good software products, they began to expand their products and collaborated with other companies. They allowed them to create software products with licenses from Microsoft.

Microsoft did not start as a big company. They were very small but they focused on having more customers, more users, and more collaboration with others. They formed a network of software companies using MS-DOS. They remained quiet for two years to build their customer’s base before issued their initial public offering (IPO) of stocks. They followed a formula for success: “Having passion for what they do and have customers who are willing to pay for what they sell”.

If you want to start your own company, you can learn from these successful stories.

Prof John Vu

Original source: http://johnvublog.com/?p=243