Notice a few guys who said they have their own businesses

how did you get the start up money

I don't know what first steps to take, to being successful

I'm a guy with only a few grand in my bank account, but I want more

at least to the point where I can buy an house and a new car, that's all I need in life

not asking for much, I just want to know the steps

The same steps every other entrepreneur has taken since the dawn of time.

Survey the market place. Think of some products or services you think people would buy, and find out how much they would pay.

Figure out how much it would cost to develop those products.

See if it's profitable.

If it is, come up with an airtight, rock solid business plan.

Then find anybody and everybody who will support you. Banks, relatives, strangers, friends.

It takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, and you'll lose money for a while before you make money.

Even the best companies run in the red for years before they make a profit.

It all starts with a product or service idea.

come up with that first before you do anything else. Spend a year if you have to. Spend five years if you have to.

But don't do anything unless you've got a solid idea for a product. An idea YOU thought of. Not some kind of franchise or "opportunity" that somebody else is selling.

Idea comes first.

Then work.

Then investment.

Then profits.


No shortcuts.

I agree with that answer.

Consider the perspective of the investor. Why should they give you money? The best answer would be that you're already making money now, but could make a lot more with their investment and then of course share those returns. Take your own money and run your business idea on a fractional scale. Show a certain percentage of profit, document it with good accounting, and then money will find you.

i wasn't going to chime in to this thread beucase I know some get tired of my bit or what not but I do want to say that over the years I've taken an approach that I want as little outside help as can afford to not have. I think I said that right lol.

The rest you have to figure out on your own I do want to say that when you take someone's money you are now obligated to take their advice, rather you want it or not. And that person's interest is always going to be geared towards getting a return on their investment.. not necessarily growing your company, and that's not always one in the same.


It's the reason why a lot of large companies shun going public. When you go public people's goals shift from being a great company to being a company that yields high dividend payments every quarter.


Even if it means working a little harder making your own money it's worth it in the end beucase you get to do things your way and no one can tell you otherwise.


Case in point, when i started my first business, the idea was good enough to draw in attention from investors and this was AFTER the dot com bubble had just burst. It was a pretty unique idea.. basically what we did is we did not just build computers, we built a system that allowed you, a complete novice, to build a computer from the grond up, and not only that, you could start from any part of the computer and work from that and it was guaranteed to work. What that means, say you don't jack **** about computers but you do know that you are starting a recording studio and you need a computer with a kick ass sound card. So you can come to our site and start building your PC from the sound card you know you need, you could build the rest of the PC around that and you would save money beucase you wouldn't be forced to buy all the other **** you didnt' need like the upgraded video card that every best buy PC has with their top of the line sound card Pc's, etc. it was ****ing brilliant. it still is brilliant. It actually filled a need; it allowed people to get what they need without having to be tech's and yet still save money.

anyway, when we first started out, we were trying to get money for the sole reason of pre buying inventory, to have some cash on hand and to run a national marketing campaign. We wanted a measly 500k. that's really all we needed. **** we really didn't even need that much. We had one VC firm we got in serious talks with and they came back and said okay, we will give you the money but in return you have to give up HALF your company and you have to let us put our own CEO in place. Basically what they were saying is yeah it's a good idea but yeah you POS's we arent' going to trust you to do jack **** with 500k, thanks for playing, thanks for giving us the idea, take your prize and your 25% of your company in case of the small chance we get bought out or go public you will have a little money. So we came back and said look we will take less but we have to stay on and we aren't giving up half our company.. no go.

so we said you know.. **** it. so it took another what.. about a year and 2-3 months but we built our revenue up to finally start making a dent in things but more importantly we were doing it our way. We were about breaking even, we now had some leverage to go our vendors and demand better rates, we were able to get a better merchant rate, we were doing ****ing great. And we were doing it OUR way. We might not have been college educated or went to Yale but you know what, we were hard core PC tech's and we knew how to sale PC's. And sale PC's we did to the tune of 20-30 a day.

now i say all this to say, when I finally got ready to leave I called the same guy up, told him i wanted out for my half they put their own guy in there, and in less than 1 year they went out of business. Not beucase I'm a genius, not beucase my partner is stupid, my partner was brilliant, but beucase the people who were brought in, didnt' give a **** about growing the company. they weren't pc guys like us. They came up with this ****ing idea that they would make more money if they focused on pre built computers. we didn't do pre built computers that wasn't the reason we got into business we didn't get into business to build computers we got in to help people who wanted specific things but weren't techs, get what they want for the lowest price possible and we had spent 2 and a half years honing this plan and idea to where we knew what the **** we were doing. They thought we were leaving money on the table (from what i understand when i left i left this is just from some of my old associates I worked with) and expanded, they started running a national campaign to promote their computers, we didn't sale AMD based PC's beucase in our mind ther really wasn't a need to we weren't dealing with people how really knew the difference between the 2 and we woudl get better rates if we could sale more of one can than less of 2, now they sold AMD chip-set based computers.


so with my web development company now I want zero outside help from anyone. with anything I do in the future, i want zero outside help. if I can't do it on my own I don't want it.'


Even lik with facebook, mark Z could give a flying **** absout going public, that was all the people who had invested in his company wanting to cash out. He had to answer the call. Now the core of their company has gone from being the best social networking platform ever to figuring out a way to make money off of these bastards.

Man thanks so much guys I really soaked all that in

House and car should not be goals, they COST money and depreciate in value. Goal SHOULD be a biz that you barely have to manage, so you are left free to travel and do as you wish. That amount of money can be as little as 10k a year, if you know how to shield it from the tax vultures. and it's not that hard at all to make that kind of money,with quite a few online bizes. You can develope a friendship with a REAL car mechanic with about $100, spread over a few weeks, asking questions. Guys at AutoZone and PepBoys know where to find such men, who have all the tools and home garages.

Such men can tell you where to buy a foreign made minivan for under $1000, spend less than that fixing it and applying "privacy tint" to the windows. Then you will have a RELIABLE "mobile home", so to speak. You can park it anywhere, but the places I like best are National Parks and BLM, Bureau of Land Management land. BLM has a MILLION square miles of land in the West, much of it beautiful and near water, but you probably have to have 2 sites, $120 a year each, of 20 acres of "mining claim". An owner of a claim has all the rights of a property owner, but NO property taxes. Simply be up north for the summer and down south for the winter. Have a garden and small livestock, like chickens and rabbits, if you wish. If your income is thru a foreign corporation (cause your wife is a green card Asian) you don't owe taxes here, nor SS, and you can draw unemployement for the first 6 months, and Food stamps forever, basically ($200 a month, for each of you) and you can each make $3000 per year selling blood plasma.

Get one who is ALREADY doing live porn vids, and she can EASILY make 30k a year here in US, you get half. Bingo, you are free to do as you wish, putting money in the bank, even. US girls get $5-6 a MINUTE in "private chat", and since you of course have picked a 12 on a scale of 1-10, she will stay quite busy on weekends. So put a little mask across her eyes and presto, nobody knows.

Even if you don't ever want to have your own business (i.e. have a great job, unemployed and like it that way), it's GREAT TO TELL GIRLS YOU HAVE YOUR OWN BUSINESS. It gives you a ready excuse for getting phone calls at odd hours (international clients), going on dates (working late), taking a chick to Vegas (business trips, conventions). It helps keep your personal and economic life a big secret -- a mystery. Doesn't hurt that it makes you look like you're made out of money, and just cheap as fvck, which many petty rich are (they're petty as hell about everything).

goundra, thanks for the BLM tip! A cool climate goes great with growing berries (see Bible Belt's tip here).

Besides, if you really do have a business, you can lease a house, car, etc., and a certain % of their cost is business expenses (home office, business clothing, etc.) Then there's the fact that you can also get business credit cards and have money to gamble in stocks and other investments. Operating a BLM claim is a business!

take your current perspective of a investor. Why Should they supply people money? your Simplest solution would possibly be that you\'re already generating income now, but could possibly help Make a lot further with its investment subsequently needless to say share those returns. acquire the income IN ADDITION TO run ones business idea with an fractional scale. Show a certain percentage of profit, record It throughout good accounting, after that income will acquire you.






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NoorAlamShahzad

My first business cost £2k to start
I saved this money from working a job/ doing small things etc - this is the same as some friends also.

After a few years it was making 20k a month

It's all about skills: negotiating, SEO, photoshop, website building etc

I retired at 48 and got bored as Hell by 50. I bootstrapped a small finance concern. Started with $3,000 and had cash flow from an initial couple of clients and grew it from there reinvesting everything for seven years except for the bills (including retirement funding). Took risks that involved putting my own house up as deal collateral - twice. No bank loans except for payroll and cash shortfalls due to investing, no angel investors. Took on people that would eventually become partners when they proved long-term cash flow positive.

We're up to 15 now, with me in NYC, a partner in Tortola, BVI and a partner in Nanjing, China. We may grow more in China, but not yet. It's ours not the bank's and not equity holders because we are the equity holders. Have been offered nice buyouts and could either cash out or grow a lot faster if we took them. But we're having too much fun to sell and the money is plenty good enough for us.

between the Net, shooting and hunting, and competition with airsoft guns, primitive weapons, shtf hiking/bushcraft, I haven't become bored yet, and i doubt that i ever will. VERY few jobs are more interesting than your hobbies. Find a way to retire on your investments and let somebody else beat their own head in, while doing what you would have worked-at.