A VC in Vacationland

English: YouTube business model canvas sketch by Alexander Osterwalder (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I see a lot of smart young entrepreneurs who have spent many hours fine tuning  their brilliant and disruptive ideas on how they are going to change the world. The reality is that they should spend as much time thinking about their business model and the resources required to make success happen.

Here are a few thoughts on what that entails:

1. Get others to share your vision–a "single shigle" entrepreneur, one who has no compatriots that share his or her vision, is immediately suspect. Be sure you have assembled a team of people with the right skills to commercialize your vision before you approach the venture guys.
2. Try cheap first and again if that fails–too often, I see superexpensive funding requests that build technology before ensuring that the customers will actuall buy it. Find a way to prototype the idea with a few clients, get the right types of feedback and then develop the market rollout plan.
3. Be realistic— if I see one more billion dollar marketplace slide in an investor presentation, I am going to <fill in the blank, but think stomach upset>. No one believes it and it hurts your credibility. It is better to parse the market and estimate how much revenue  each channel will generate, rather than just one large number.