Author: Ian Betteridge
Date: 31/03/2008
What’s the biggest barrier to starting a new company? Having a good idea.
The barriers to starting a company used to hinge around money. Everyone needed capital to start with, to hire an office, buy equipment, rent a new phone line and so on.
As my friend Andrew Smith points out, though, many of these elements are now either free, or so cheap you barely need to worry about them. You already have at least one computer to work on, plus a broadband connection into your home. Software like Google Docs mean you don’t need to shell out for an office suite. Products like BT Workspace mean you have collaboration tools at your fingertips. Buy a BlackBerry and you have email everywhere. And so on.
The existence of all these tools, plus sites like eBay and Etsy, mean that more and more micro-businesses are starting up, usually in the home, without any of the major capital investment which would have been required a few years ago. Starting a business is no longer something that you need to save for a decade to do: you can simply start now, in your spare time, and give up the day job when you’re making enough money to justify it.
But when the cost of entry to doing something drops there is one thing that remains rare and thus expensive: ideas. In this kind of economy, having a good idea for a business and having the talent to create whatever you’re selling are priceless. That’s why the biggest barrier to starting a company now isn’t capital, but ideas. And it’s why having a good idea is worth more money than ever before.