business-plan, startup-costs, business-registration, llcHello I am new on this site. I want to learn how to start up IT business. I see and you guys more exp that without knowing proper knowledge then unfortunately company can go in big loss.
For the startup I have to get the domain name first & host our site to represent ourself in market is not a complete task. What other things any person have to do for opening IT business and what cost it takes overral ?
Do I have to register somewhere for this so everybody considered that it is valid IT company ?
From your profile, you’re a developer, so I think you want to start a software development company?
You need to focus on three things:
i. Before you start full time, try and work part time first (while keeping your full time job) and get some clients. This way you can test and see if business life is what you want. You can get freelance clients online or through your current contacts / friends etc.
ii. You need to figure out your services and prices. Don’t lower your prices to the bottom, it’s not worth it (been there done that.. ). Try and push your prices to a higher level while delivering great service to customers and keeping them happy. Get rid of cheap customers early, they will give you stress, and maybe you will lose time and money on them also.
iii. Figure out some sort of plan for the next six months. I’d 100% encourage you to write a business plan. Most of the time, after 6-8 mths, the first business plan you wrote will be so far off the mark - but that process of writing a business plan helps you to think of so many variables and it’s a very helpful thing you can do for your business before you start.
iv. Figure out how you will keep money coming in, and how much you will be spending, and how you will grow over the six months. Talk to people, especially entreprenuers. /entreprenuer on reddit is excellent too. Money is the most important thing to a business, and figuring out how to keep it coming in is the magic we are all trying to grok.
v. Try and conserve your resources as much as possible in the beginning, especially since you’re a beginner. Don’t go and spend on a new office if you can work from your home etc. Be tight with your time & money.
vi. Spend your time & money on things that will speed up your service delivery, marketing, building customer accounts.
There’s a lot more I can say but I don’t want to lecture .. the most important things are to have the love for business and long hours & hard work. If you have these two, no matter how tough times become you will stick through and realise your vision.
Best of luck :)
It’s not entirely clear what you’re asking, but I am interpreting your question as a question about business formation and publicity.
You may need to create an entity (corporation, LLC, or partnership), or you may be able to operate as yourself (called a sole proprietorship). Ask your lawyer and accountant for their views on your needs. There are costs for creating an entity, but there are also benefits to certain business structures, such as providing some protections to you against lawsuits that might name you personally as a defendant. Again, ask your lawyer and accountant.
As for getting your name out there: this is a very broad topic, and it’s hard to answer without more detail. a20 has given you a lot of good material in his or her answer. If you clarify your question, we can help you more.
The critical task for any new IT company is simple: find the next customer. When you have a customer, the tasks needed to legitimise your business are both simple and necessary. Before you have a customer, you have to make a lot of judgements, and the enabling activities are distractions from what you intend to be in business for.
Where doesn’t this work? If one customer isn’t enough, so that you need a thousand customers, then another tack is needed. Typically the advice is, find evidence that many people would want to pay money for what you have in mind. Or more accurately, iterate value propositions until you find one which you could deliver to a provably ready market.
Again, the steps needed to establish the corporate vehicle for your plans can be left, in whole or in part, until you have achieved validation.
In some legal jurisdictions, there’s extensive red tape and perhaps cost entailed in any intention to trade. For that reason, a lot of startups choose to focus on selling in markets where this is not the case. The great news is that distribution, in the Internet age, is easy, so you can pitch in the Pitcairn Islands for customers in Pittsburgh via the web, via app stores and via trading platforms for digital goods and human skills.
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