Ready, Fire, Aim

Last Friday we were planning how to get started with the business and how we should spent our limited resources. The conclusion was to invest more in proof-of-concept approach. In practice, this means that one of the first steps is to create web version of our game concentrating on the core of our idea. This will allow us to achieve two or three goals:

Test our ideas with real gamers and get valuable feedback for the “real game”.

Combined with web marketing efforts, it will make our name known for the public.

Leverage our position in the eyes of potential investors (provided that we’ll succeed in two previous tasks).

So stay tuned, I’m confident that we’ll have some visible results pretty soon here. I’m enthusiastic reader of Drew’s Marketing Minute blog and today he wrote about new book from Michael Masterson titled Ready, Fire, Aim: Zero to $100 Million in No Time Flat. It discusses about starting business and that selling is the key to success.

“Nothing matters more than selling. Many first-time entrepreneurs have the impression that they are doing things in a logical order when they look for the perfect office space, have logos designed, and order a lot of inventory. The reality is they are wasting valuable resources on secondary and tertiary endeavors. If no one is going to buy what you want to sell, you’ve just wasted a bunch of money on a business that will never be.”

The strategy to follow, according to Masterson, when starting a new business is to get the product ready enough to sell, but not worry about perfecting it. (Light Flash proof-of-concept, that is for us.) Then sell like hell and if there’s results, then it’s time to make it better (which is for consoles and stuff for us). I already ordered the book, this is a must read!

I’m quite sure we have chosen the right path to follow. Now it’s pure execution. One of my favorite quotes is from Jack Welch in his book Winning: “In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement like hell.” That’s what we need to do right now.

Tommi.

Tags: books, HRS, implementation, Masterson, proof-of-concept, quote, sales, selling, strategy, Welch