Tips from the Hub Incubator: Founding Your Business
Starting a Business
Quick Guide
Are you ready?
- The right cofounders
- The right advisors
- Passion for the business
- Ready to work long hours for a future reward
Is your idea ready?
- The right customers
- The right product
- Large enough market
Can you grow?
- Scalable business model
- Marketing and sales plan
Can you get there?
- Market price point is high enough
- Know the annual sales needed to break even
- Know how much you need to spend to launch
- Have a post-launch operating budget
- Revenue projections 3 – 5 years after funding
Starting Your Business
Are You Ready?
We don't want to dissuade you from pursuing your dreams, but you should know going in that starting a business is hard. It can be long hours over months or even years with little payback and lots of opportunities to doubt yourself. Entrepreneurs are able to hold themselves accountable, have the grit to push through the hard parts, are willing to pivot and try new things, have financial backing to launch a business, and have full support from their family members and close friends.
The First Steps tool from the Wisconsin Small Business Development Center will help you assess where you're at in your startup journey, and what you need work on. Once you've completed this self-assessment tool, we'll work with you on understanding and overcoming the gaps that it reveals.
Customer Discovery
Do you know who will your customers be? Do they feel the pain of the problem you're solving? Are you really creating value that they want to pay for? How do you connect with those customers? We'll help you with market research and understanding your customers.
Business Model
At its core, your business has to create value, deliver that value to customers, and capture that value as revenue. How will you make money? Build customer relationships? Scale your business? We work with you to understand the basic building blocks of your business, and to explore other business models.
Networking
We have contacts throughout the West Michigan economic development community, other organizations supporting entrepreneurs, and businesses. Whether you need funding, engineering design, legal guidance, or just other entrepreneurs to bounce ideas off of, The Hub is here to connect you.
Planning for Success
You might be looking for investors or you might be bootstrapping; either way, you need to know how you’re going to make money and how much money you need to grow your business to the point where it's sustainable.
What will it take to scale your business? What your burn rate will be, and will you have the revenues to pay the bills? For a new product or an early-stage startup, these are hard questions to ask.
How We Help
We’ve been there, and we know that there's a lot to consider. We're experienced in guiding entrepreneurs through the process of converting their great idea into a great business.