Build a sentence using words ‘millionaire’, ‘eBay’, and ‘selling’. “Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, became a millionaire by selling gadgets on the Internet.”
Come on, think sharp! The Iranian-French entrepreneur did not become a millionaire; he became a billionaire! Though, there are many of his portal’s users who became millionaires by simply opening an account and selling items. Dan Glasure, 31, is one of these champions who sold more than $2.5 million of model trains in 2006. James Anderson is another one who made more than $2 million by selling metaphysical items such as swords.
Saying this, we can all agree that being an entrepreneur doesn’t need to always start from scratch; as long as you open your eyes and sharpen your mind, you can build your own empire on top of an others’ base: ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’, as it were. Yet, we’re not saying that you can steal others’ achievements and call them yours. Think of it as expanding or improving their results. Besides, business is not necessarily always about hi-tech. What you need is to simply know what people are (or might be) looking for out there and how you can best help them fulfill their wishes.
Ready for the next exercise? Put the words ‘idea’, ‘YouTube’, and ‘different’ in a sentence. “The idea behind YouTube was different from those of other video sharing sites.” Come on! You really think so? No! The idea wasn’t different, but the approach was. The idea of video sharing was out there for quite a long time. You might remember shareyourworld.com; started in 1997, it was the first website that allowed its users to upload their homemade videos. But it was shut down after the dotcom bubble burst, simply because they couldn’t cope with the huge bandwidth demand from their users and couldn’t find an easy solution for transcoding different types of media formats. YouTube did both very well.
Chad Hurley and Steve Chen built their site based on exactly the same idea, but at the right time, when bandwidth had become much cheaper. They also found a very user-friendly approach to convert different video formats to a single one that can be played instantly in any player – Adobe Flash technology. In telling this story, we want to say: it’s not always necessary to be the first, but the best. If you’re not an inventor or innovator, at least open your eyes and see what’s wrong with what others do: fix it at the right time and right place and you could get where Chad and Steve got.
Now try this one: ‘search engine’, ‘Google’, ‘compete’. “No search engine can compete with Google.” Huh…? If Larry Page and Sergey Brin had thought like that, we would have never Googled a word. No one dared to challenge the Internet emperor Yahoo, except for the two PhD students working on their idea in their Stanford University dormitory. They believed in their idea, and so did a few of their friends who invested in Google in 1998. And you all know better than us what has happened to the once emperor of the Internet. As Napoleon Hill says, ‘All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.’ So, don’t let your idea down because you don’t dare fight with monsters. Go for it! An idea isn’t worth a penny until you develop it and put it into action. And this asks for your time, money and talent.
It’s now time to evaluate your first BizTalk quiz. What’s your mark? More important, what’s your dream? If you want to be an entrepreneur, there are many doors to open. You can build your house on top of somebody else’s mansions and still be an entrepreneur like many of eBay’s successful traders. You can use your opportunity to do what others have once done, but in a better and smarter way. And still you can be the next YouTube. Or you can change the world, as Google did, if you dare to believe in your idea, work it out and present it to the world, no matter how many giants are waiting to slay you! And always remember what Richard Branson says: ‘Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.'”
Fardad Zand, from Iran, is a PhD student in Economics of Innovation’. Shahin Mesgarzadeh, also from Iran, is an MSc student in Computer Engineering. Please send any comments and links to: biztalk4you@gmail.com.
Build a sentence using words ‘millionaire’, ‘eBay’, and ‘selling’. “Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, became a millionaire by selling gadgets on the Internet.” Come on, think sharp! The Iranian-French entrepreneur did not become a millionaire; he became a billionaire! Though, there are many of his portal’s users who became millionaires by simply opening an account and selling items. Dan Glasure, 31, is one of these champions who sold more than $2.5 million of model trains in 2006. James Anderson is another one who made more than $2 million by selling metaphysical items such as swords.
Saying this, we can all agree that being an entrepreneur doesn’t need to always start from scratch; as long as you open your eyes and sharpen your mind, you can build your own empire on top of an others’ base: ‘stand on the shoulders of giants’, as it were. Yet, we’re not saying that you can steal others’ achievements and call them yours. Think of it as expanding or improving their results. Besides, business is not necessarily always about hi-tech. What you need is to simply know what people are (or might be) looking for out there and how you can best help them fulfill their wishes.
Ready for the next exercise? Put the words ‘idea’, ‘YouTube’, and ‘different’ in a sentence. “The idea behind YouTube was different from those of other video sharing sites.” Come on! You really think so? No! The idea wasn’t different, but the approach was. The idea of video sharing was out there for quite a long time. You might remember shareyourworld.com; started in 1997, it was the first website that allowed its users to upload their homemade videos. But it was shut down after the dotcom bubble burst, simply because they couldn’t cope with the huge bandwidth demand from their users and couldn’t find an easy solution for transcoding different types of media formats. YouTube did both very well.
Chad Hurley and Steve Chen built their site based on exactly the same idea, but at the right time, when bandwidth had become much cheaper. They also found a very user-friendly approach to convert different video formats to a single one that can be played instantly in any player – Adobe Flash technology. In telling this story, we want to say: it’s not always necessary to be the first, but the best. If you’re not an inventor or innovator, at least open your eyes and see what’s wrong with what others do: fix it at the right time and right place and you could get where Chad and Steve got.
Now try this one: ‘search engine’, ‘Google’, ‘compete’. “No search engine can compete with Google.” Huh…? If Larry Page and Sergey Brin had thought like that, we would have never Googled a word. No one dared to challenge the Internet emperor Yahoo, except for the two PhD students working on their idea in their Stanford University dormitory. They believed in their idea, and so did a few of their friends who invested in Google in 1998. And you all know better than us what has happened to the once emperor of the Internet. As Napoleon Hill says, ‘All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.’ So, don’t let your idea down because you don’t dare fight with monsters. Go for it! An idea isn’t worth a penny until you develop it and put it into action. And this asks for your time, money and talent.
It’s now time to evaluate your first BizTalk quiz. What’s your mark? More important, what’s your dream? If you want to be an entrepreneur, there are many doors to open. You can build your house on top of somebody else’s mansions and still be an entrepreneur like many of eBay’s successful traders. You can use your opportunity to do what others have once done, but in a better and smarter way. And still you can be the next YouTube. Or you can change the world, as Google did, if you dare to believe in your idea, work it out and present it to the world, no matter how many giants are waiting to slay you! And always remember what Richard Branson says: ‘Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming.'”
Fardad Zand, from Iran, is a PhD student in Economics of Innovation’. Shahin Mesgarzadeh, also from Iran, is an MSc student in Computer Engineering. Please send any comments and links to: biztalk4you@gmail.com.
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