Questions

While I am working this project, how can I put this on a resume as project? -I am currently working with a group and we just have written up a business plan. I have started a brief market research campaign. -This is my first serious attempt at starting a business and never had any experience with developing a marketing plan before or business plan. So this is college without grades and paying tuition. -The accomplishments that pertain to me in this project: -Learned a lot about starting a business in general -I have fundamental understanding in starting a marketing campaign thanks to the internet - Developed more into a leader. - How to compare competitors and improve on what they are doing into what we are doing - I have found that I am awesome researcher and think very analytically. Overall: this is still in progress but still want to add this to the list to show creativity and being a self starter and I can stand up to any challenge. Trying to figure out what this can do for an employer. Suggestions? #thanks!:)

I think business plans are great if you are building a business with a known and validated business model (like a coffee shop, restaurant, retail store, etc.) But if you are building a startup (a new business model that has not been executed successfully before), The Lean Startup (http://theleanstartup.com) method or the Business Model Generation (http://businessmodelgeneration.com) approach are better. Steve Blank's resource, The Startup Owner's Manual (http://www.stevenblank.com/startup_index_qty.html) also has some great practical steps.

While, I know you are looking at this as a theoretical educational exercise, I would encourage you to consider taking some of the steps laid out in the resources I mentioned that are practical steps towards building a real business. There is no reason you can't do these things while in school, and you might just end up with something that is valuable.

Speaking from the resume evaluation perspective, I would put more weight on a resume of someone that has done some of the actual work of building a business, rather than someone who did a mental exercise / simulation on a business.

For example:
- Did market research on the perceived need for a new product and the possibility of building a list of potential customers for the theoretical product (not that impressive and / or valuable in my opinion - this is the old school Business Plan style approach to entrepreneurship)

vs.

- Developed a new product design and pitched it to potential customers. Built website and internet marketing campaign for the new product that generated a list of 2500 customer names & email addresses who expressed interested in the product. (this is impressive and is an expression of the Lean Startup)

Here is a great article that describes the different approaches you could take and how great entrepreneurs behave: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/how-great-entrepreneurs-think.html

Entrepreneurship is a hands on exercise. Jump in and go for it.


Answered 9 years ago

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