A dozen questions to ask before starting a business

  1. Who will be your customers?
  2. Why will they want your product/service?
  3. How many of them exist and how will you get to them?
  4. How much will they be willing to pay?
  5. Why will your customers talk positively about your product/service?
  6. What will your product/service cost to create, deliver and support?
  7. How easy will it be to start this business?
  8. How much capital will you need to start?
  9. How will you defend it against competitors?
  10. How easy will it be to scale the business?
  11. How much capital will you need to scale it?
  12. Why do you want to do this?

If you don’t know the answers, or at the very least have a good feel for them then save your time and money and don’t start.