On Tuesday I attended an excellent seminar entitled “Growing a successful social enterprise http://www.schoolforstartups.co.uk/2010/01/20/growing-a-successful-social-enterprise-3/” run by Doug Richard’s School for Startups. The event centred around socially aware and ethical enterprises but the messages apply to all businesses starting out on the long road to success.

Doug has a charismatic delivery style and was great at getting across his key points which I intend to discuss in more detail over the coming weeks. In the first session he covered something vital to all entrepreneurs who are starting out with a new idea. Entitled “The top 20 issues every entrepreneur must be able to address” he summarised the key points everyone should tackle when starting out.

We at Ortegra talk to many entrepreneurs about what they consider to be a “great idea”, but how many have asked themselves these 20 questions and been honest in their answer? At the end of the day the key success criteria for a new business is making sure that there are enough people who are willing to buy the product or service at the price being asked. Is there enough differentiation between your offering and the competition? What is your uniqueness? Will people talk about your product or service behind your back? If they do, you have something worthwhile, unless of course it’s negative!!!

I urge all budding entrepreneurs to ask themselves Doug’s 20 questions:

Innovation questions

1.    Make something people want or need. Have you?

2.    Is that enough ?

3.    How do we know?


Make something people want
4.    What does it do that other products don’t? Is it enough?


Make something worth talking about

Customer questions

5.    Who are they?


Market questions
6.    How many are there (market segments)?

7.    How can we reach them?

8.    How many can we reach?


Pricing questions
9.    How much is this worth to them?

10.  How much does it cost us?

11.  Who should pay?


Industry questions
12.  Why are we better?

13.  Can they catch up?

14.  Are we all losers?

· threat of substitutes

· threat of new entrants

· buyer power

· supplier power

· intense competition


Team questions
15.  Am I on a mission?

16.  Am I the woman for the job?

17.  What must we do?

18.  What will we be good at?

19.  Who do we need to know?

20.  What makes an entrepreneur successful?