Sell the Dream

GoBigNetwork

Business Funding Series:
Sell the Potential, not the Present

So there you are on day one of your new venture. You’ve thought long and hard about your new idea and you’re ready to build a great company that is going to change the world. Now it’s time to attract customers, employees, and investors. No problem, right?

Except for the fact that you have absolutely nothing to offer anyone because your company does not have an office, a product, or a single employee! So how do you get started with this world-changing vision if you have few assets to leverage? The simple answer – sell the dream, baby, sell the dream!

The vision is the asset
A startup company has only one asset – the vision of what the company might be someday. Today it’s just some poor guy burning through his life savings hoping all his hard work will pay off. No one wants to quit their job to go work for that vision!

Yet employees will jump out of bed to work for a vision they believe in, even if the paycheck isn’t there just yet. Investors get excited about the idea of making an enormous return on a single investment. And customers are always interested in the next best product from the next best company. You need to become all of these. While you cannot completely ignore where you are today, you should not let that define the prospective opportunity your company offers. From a practical perspective, most startup companies evolve so quickly that they’re not even worth describing in current terms. Your focus should be on getting the company to where it will be, not dwelling on its position today.