Monday, July 14, 2014

The entrepreneurship bug

So i caught the entrepreneurship bug!

It was the start of May 2014, I'd over the preceding weeks had a family member in Abuja, Nigeria who had some health issues. The travails we experienced in attempting to get quality care was distressing. Particularly as finances were not the limiting factor but rather systemic issues that conspired to provide mediocre care.

As  i pondered on this problem i suddenly got the bright spark of an idea that would improve the quality of the health system. The idea filled me with such excitement that i wanted to quit my job right away and jump on a plane to get started on my idea.

Unfortunately reality soon set in, I  had bills to pay, a family to raise etc. I was convinced however that i was on to something. In my mind's eye i had this vision of the wonderful change my innovation could bring. The next logical thing for me to do was to put it down in writing, my business plan was born! I spent hours and days without sleep working on it. I've subsequently gone on to find out the traditional business plan has fallen out of favour particular in tech ventures - my bright idea is a tech venture that aims to improves the quality of healthcare.

So while i had the momentum i bought a domain and webhosting on the 11th of may. Money had been spent i was committed!

Now this may not apply for others but for me, writing down a business plan was useful as it helped solidify my thoughts and forced me to do more research and gain more knowledge. The more work i did the more of a knowledge gap i realised i had. Next step thus was to hit my local library. I browsed the business and IT sections and picked up 2 books - 'the lean startup' by Eric ries and 'how to start a tech business' by Alex cowan. I went on to find out that the former book was a huge bible for tech startups.

...And so my study began.