The importance of "Timing"

I have touched on this before but I will go into more detail because I keep coming across it in my readings. We tend to hear that "timing is everything" and while I disagree with the term "everything", it most surely is a crucial part of the equation.

Solid planning + adequate funding + timing = real business

Conversely, missing any of these ingredients, you get no business (a company with no cash flow really isn't a business). This is not one of my insights that comes from some business book or MBA classes, this one is all experience. We felt that we had a solid plan, the timing was good and we would be able to get adequate funding once we proved the other two. Well suffice it to say that the timing was a few years early and so we never got the funding.

My hypothesis now however is that the timing won't get much better than right now and even though we don't have adequate funding, showing proof of concept will allow us to raise the funds. Will my hypothesis turn out to be correct? Stay tuned to the blog for the next year and you will certainly find out whether I was right or not - either way, I intend to find out the answer.

We have been told before "Build it and they will come" but I now realize that nobody ever explained who will come. We never worried about users, we were always worried about the funds to turn it into a real business and to make it survive. The users came but the investors didn't, so I guess we got our answer "they" must refer to the users.

When getting ready to launch a new project or business, be VERY CAREFUL in evaluating the landscape to determine if it really is the right time. We thought it was but we were wrong. We were blinded by the obvious benefits and potential, not realizing that our main cash-flow source had not even been successfully implemented in the mainstream, much less for niche players and small companies.

Sometimes it is smarter to wait than to get first-mover advantage, case-in-point, Friendster vs MySpace. We all know which was first and which is the leader - we hear that "the early bird gets the worm" but you know what I think, "the early bird just proves that the worm is not poisonous". Besides, there will ALWAYS be more worms, business is not usually "all or nothing".

In another century, Kings and Queens knew that people would poison their food in an effort to kill them so they had servants who tested the food BEFORE they ate it. If the servant didn't die, the food was safe to eat.

Use that method to avoid making big mistakes. If nobody else is trying to do what you are doing, there is something wrong. Somebody, somewhere, MUST be trying to do what you are doing, even in a niche market different from yours. If you don't find one, look harder, still none, then rethink exactly what you THINK you are doing and research WHY no one else is doing it.

It is just statistically improbable that you are the ONLY person on the planet pursuing the idea in ANY market.