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FOREWORD

THE 48-HOUR START-UP PHILOSOPHY

For anyone with a dream to start up on their own, there are endless airport bookshops filled with ‘build a billion-dollar company’ manuals. But what if your dream isn’t to build the next Apple? What if your dream is more … realistic?

For many of us, the most important thing that we are searching for in life is freedom. Freedom from the monotony of jobs we hate. Freedom to make a living doing something we love, to work the hours we want to work and to do business in whatever way feels right to us.

For me, starting a business to get rich somewhat misses the point. The adventure that I have had in growing my business – the fun I have had, people I’ve met and places I’ve visited – are the things that I treasure more than the material possessions I’ve been able to buy.

The idea that starting a business can be your route to freedom and adventure – to doing what you were born to do – can, for some people, be a slightly overwhelming prospect. A lot of people labour over their ideas, scheming and planning for years on end – with a worry that their idea isn’t quite right yet, that maybe they need to do more market research to be completely sure that it won’t be a total flop.

More than anything, this fear of failure stops people from pursuing their dreams. We hold ourselves back from what we deserve in life because we worry that if things don’t work out as they should and we end up with egg on our faces, people will laugh – or worse, that they won’t give us another chance.

Having met hundreds of people who struggle with this very real fear, it got me thinking: what if the risk of taking that plunge could be taken out of the equation? Is there, maybe, a way of starting a business that can allow people to dip their toe into the water, rather than jumping in at the deep end and risking everything? Perhaps if this were possible, I figured, more people would be willing and able to follow their hearts.

Maybe it’s your dream to start a business and for it to become your new full-time career. Maybe you just want to try something out for a bit of fun on the side. Or perhaps you already have a business but want to find a way of testing out some new product ideas without betting the farm.

Whatever reason you have for taking on this experiment, I very much hope that the experiences, tools and tricks I have included in this book help you to get closer to your goals. I’m pretty confident that if you put in the focus and energy required, they will.

There are lessons I have learned and tools I have found that can make the process of going from idea to first customer a whole lot quicker. Although the businesses I have started – and indeed the business you will start – are all very different, many of the steps we all go through are almost exactly the same.

Because starting a business is a road that’s been walked before, you’d be crazy to try to figure out every step of the route from scratch and on your own. Feel free to look at this book as a ‘cheat sheet’; the basic essentials you need to know about the key steps of developing an idea and getting it to market quickly.

By hotwiring the whole start-up process in this way, you’ll be able to do in days what most start-up entrepreneurs spend months on. Sure, you won’t build a billion-dollar company in a weekend, but you’ll be amazed at what you can achieve with a methodical process and, above all, two days of complete focus.

The progress you make in your first two days will most likely give you the confidence to take your idea even further. And, of course, the story of every successful company in the world began this way – someone overcame their fears and took the first step.