So you have been following the trend of dotcom startups burning through hundreds and thousands and millions of dollars on their business to generate and force their business model or no plan into a viable one, and you are thinking you could do the same?

The reality is most startups have no chance at all. A chance that is to earn the privilege of playing with many business models with a boatload of external financing.

Don’t get me wrong, the concept of maintaining critical mass using longtail strategies is a well thought out strategy to tapping a massive market and monetizing it, but the reality is, it defies the laws of what a startup business should be about, and most ordinary startup going that way, would fail miserably without the required external boatload of finances to back such models lifeline.

What should a startup business be about to a young entrepreneur with no chance of funding?

1. It should be about a great product and service that its stakeholders are willing to pay for , from inception.

2. It should be about a structured business plan or a model you have developed, not about an idea that creates traffic and you hope that someday, you would turn it around into a business, and thereby make enough money through advertisement to sustain it.

3. It should be about a problem or an ingenious creation of a market for a solution you have created.

4. It should make money if its a business, and the revenue generated should be seeing profits within 12 months if you are bootstrapping, or at-least within 2 years, if you have the capital to support it.

5. Lastly I am presuming you have no chance of getting external funding and all you have is your idea and the big market out there, which is relevant to about 95-98% of startups out there.

Reality Check
This is the reality for 95-98% of ideas out there.

1. You are not funded by an Angel Investor or a VC

2. You dont have 100,000 USD, 1M USD or even 50,000 USD to burn

3. You are just an ordinary business trying to create an enterprise that is profitable and sustainable.

4. You have spotted a great market and a need and have developed a solution to cater for it.

5. You dont have all the time and money in the world to play with before you discover how to monetize it

You are not faceboook, Twitter or Google!