Week 1: Start-Up Basics

Welcome back to my Senior Project blog. I spent this week investigating the foundations of starting a business and analyzing the agreed-upon principles that lead to growth from the outset. In that vein, I started to read “Disciplined Entrepreneurship: 24 Steps to a Successful Startup” by Bill Aulet. Aulet identifies 6 major themes of entrepreneurship: who is your customer, what can you do for your customer, how does your customer acquire your product, how do you make money off your product, how do you design and build your product, how do you scale your business. Of these themes, I believe the most relevant at the outset of this project is to identify the answers to the first three of the theme’s questions which will be a focus of mine next week. Along with the 6 themes Aulet also described the single necessary and sufficient condition for a business: a paying customer. This struck me as it was deceptively simple, however, it is a concept many founders often overlook, choosing to focus more on building teams and gaining investors rather than obtaining paying customers. I will take this to heart as I continue my research and look for patterns and strategies for success. Regarding my placement at Synchro Events, I have yet to begin my internship with Mr. Cilignr. My work there is set to begin at the start of next week. While I would characterize this week as relatively slow it was nevertheless invaluable in reframing how I view start-ups.