Spreading good ideas with someone you know is one of the simplest things we can do to improve the conversation.

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Spreading good ideas with someone you know is one of the simplest things we can do to improve the conversation.

• Didier Grossemy replied on 04:44 AM on February 09, 2009
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The Challenges of Starting a Small Business

Clifford Schorer Adjunct Professor; The Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center at Columbia Business School

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Cliff Schorer: Well, I think the greatest challenge first is having a solid idea that you can build a business around. I think it's incredibly important that you vet it carefully and you ask as many experts in the field as you can for advice especially if you're your own person elderly people or older people love to give you advice and help you out. So that'd be the first step I'd take to find out if you've got a good idea and if you … it's within your scope of capability to make it happen. There's always plenty of capital around if you have a good idea and it's structured well so I think that that's where important business planning comes in where you show that you have a grasp of what it will take to do it, that you're not overly ambitious. They — We see so many business plans where it's kind of stick with me, you'll wear diamonds kind of thing and we want to know there's reality underneath, that we want to know that you really understood how long it takes to put together a sales organization or to develop a product order, take from prototype to packaged goods, how difficult it is and how challenging. If you have —  If you convey that you have a sense of that I think you have a great chance towards doing real well. After you've got that kernel of an idea I think the next most important thing you do is to kind of structure it out carefully. Think about the components of it. Begin to talk to the market and see are people really interested. A lot of us have great ideas but the public's not interested in them so I think it's pretty important to find out very, very early on if there is a market and if people would be interested in it.

Recorded on: 5/13/08

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Clifford Schorer Adjunct Professor; The Eugene Lang Entrepreneurship Center at Columbia Business School

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Professor Schorer is a serial entrepreneur who specializes in the start-up acquisition and development of small and mid-sized companies. He focuses on businesses with unique ideas or technologies that are in need of guidance during their initial growth phases. Cliff has been involved with companies in the high tech arena, his last position being CEO of GeoVideo Networks, a Lucent Technologies Venture. Prior to that his career included businesses in the real estate, office-supply and health care industries. During the early 1990’s he spent a considerable amount of time in Russia using his entrepreneurial approach to assist in the privatization process During his extensive professional career, Schorer has lectured in numerous business and academic forums both in the United States and abroad. He has developed financial management software programs for business education through his publishing company Bized.

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