Will Your Big Business Idea Boom…

Or Simply Burn Up Your Bank Account?

Find Out BEFORE You Waste Years of Effort and Thousands (or Millions) of Dollars

Dear fellow entrepreneur,

I’ve served as CEO of three Silicon Valley startups, raised over 70 million dollars in venture capital and helped create a company that went public and was later sold for over $150,000,000.

I’ve mentored thousands of entrepreneurs and CEOs, both personally and as a current faculty member at the Haas Business School, University of California, Berkeley. I’ve enjoyed and observed amazing success over the past two decades.

You can have the same success.

It was my first venture – and biggest heartbreak – that taught me many of the lessons you need to know to avoid catastrophic business failure.

It was January 1985. After five years of swiftly advancing through the ranks as a young electrical engineer at Honeywell Research Center, I was itching to form my own company.

Along with four other top-notch engineers from Honeywell and Sperry Univac, we set out to develop something different… something new. Our brainchild was a computer-aided design tool that could streamline our jobs of designing complex electronic circuits.

After six months of working nights and weekends together on product development, we had a fairly good idea of what we wanted to do and how the business would run.

We even managed to attract an angel investor who agreed to provide an abandoned warehouse for our startup’s headquarters and fund us $50,000 a month for ten months in exchange for a small equity stake. The future looked bright.

A month later we had ten people working in the warehouse. The pace was feverish! We worked seven days a week, and a 14-hour day was considered a short day. But the long hours and tireless effort soon paid off.

I still remember the exhilarating day we made our breakthrough – July 17, 1985. Loud cheers went up as the machine we built computed and displayed the correct outputs on the screen for the first time. We had it made – we thought.

Where it all went wrong

Fast forward two years. Things were very different.

By this point there were 44 employees in all. Hard workers with a big vision. And every one of us had now assembled en masse in the company’s large conference room.

The purpose of the meeting: to announce the layoff of all but six employees, the firing of most of the management team, and the installation by investors of a new CEO who knew nothing about the industry or the product on which we had worked so hard.

We were divided into two groups and placed in two separate rooms. After a few minutes, it was announced that everyone in Room One had been terminated. A very small team remained in Room Two, with the sole job of selling off the company’s assets.

As a member of that small remaining team, I had the unpleasant task of helping dismantle everything we had worked so hard for over the past two years.

So what happened? How did a team of hard-working, bright young entrepreneurs with a great idea in a growing industry suddenly get tossed unceremoniously to the curb? Where did we go wrong?

In our rush to take on the world of business, we made a handful of naïve yet basic mistakes—the same type of mistakes that doom well over half of all new businesses to failure in their first few years:

• We focused on a product that we wanted and knew about, rather than one that potential customers wanted.
• We neglected to speak to potential customers or users.
• We had no idea whether there was a market big enough to support our product.
• We had no grasp of marketing or sales, and our concerns about secrecy kept us from seeking expert advice.
• We did not validate any of our key assumptions in the market.

We learned from the experience. But we learned too late to save the business.

The difference experience makes

Excitement and enthusiasm are important while starting a business. They will carry you through the long hours, unexpected setbacks, and financial strains when starting out. But there is no substitute for experience.

The way I see it, there are two ways to get experience:

• Learn from your own mistakes
• Learn from someone else’s

Many new entrepreneurs choose to gain experience “on the fly” as they build their new businesses. They undoubtedly gain experience, but at what cost?

Think about it. You will invest a tremendous amount of time and effort into making your business successful. Most people commit anywhere from one to three years of their life to starting a business. The toll starting a new business can take on your health and relationships shouldn’t be underestimated.

And personal financial investment… well, that just comes with the territory. The cost of being underemployed during this period alone can total several hundred thousand dollars. And that’s in addition to your actual hard costs, including equipment, salaries, and fees.

You might make it flying solo, despite the odds. But if your business fails, it’s all been wasted – unless you learn from your mistakes and create a stronger business as a result. Either way, that’s a high price to pay for experience that is readily available elsewhere.

What price do you put on experience?

What if you could know whether your idea might work or not… before you ever started?

Wouldn’t it be great to strip away the uncertainty that comes with unfamiliar ground? That’s the benefit of experience.

Starting a business is like a long-distance road trip. Experience gives you the tools to help you complete the trip successfully.

Before you ever get on the road, you need to have a reliable vehicle. You’ll need a map to make sure you travel in the right direction. You’re going to need fuel along the way. Once in a while you should take a break, get some rest, and check under the hood before getting back on the road. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you want to select agreeable passengers to bring along with you.

7 Steps to Successful Startup: Simple Lessons Before You Quit Your Day Job!

It took me two decades to acquire the knowledge I put in this eBook, but I am giving it away FREE for a limited time.

Why am I not charging for this information? After all, if you wanted to hire a qualified consultant for your new business, it would cost you hundreds of dollars an hour!

Let me tell you why I want you to have this book at no charge: I have seen literally hundreds of good, honest, bright people waste years of their lives and hundreds of thousands of dollars pursuing ideas that had no chance of succeeding. I don't want you to be next.

Even if we never do business together, I'm confident that this book will help you.

Don't wait! The information inside this book is life-changing. Start my 7-step process today!

To your success,

 Naeem Zafar