I’m an engineering inventor currently working for a big corporation. I have no previous business experience other than what I’ve gained from my current job. My research tells me that my invention has sustainable competitive advantage. I’ve written a business plan that I think supports my idea. I’m ready to try and interest people to fund the project. Probably $1 million initial funding.

Of course nothing is ever as simple as it seems. I don’t know the person who asked that question, or his or her background, so I have to do some guessing. What I end up with is a series of reactions: Choose your answer from the list of possible answers. And I can’t make all the possible answers consistent with each other. Sorry.

1. Are you sure you’re not underestimating yourself? One classic model for the entrepreneurial invention-driven startup is run by the hard-driving passionate inventor-entrepreneur. The investors hope the original founder can accommodate others in the team, listen to advice and step aside as the company grows so big that it requires more management skills than plain passion. Maybe you should rewrite your history to make yourself more like the CEO. Most people who end up as CEO start out like you say you have, with “what I’ve gained from my current job.” Humility is nice, but self-confidence and competence are nice, too.
2. Investors don’t want to invest in ideas without teams to run them. The business plan development period is the time to build a team. If you’re not the CEO, whom do you know that would want to team up with you and enhance that business plan? Do you have somebody who can manage, somebody who can sell and somebody who can produce? A team normally includes several people with different skill sets, but–and this is really important–all of whom believe in the venture and are prepared to jump on board as soon as it is financed. They should join in the plan development and join in the meetings with investors. You don’t hire a CEO at this point; you find a potential CEO to join the team, contribute to the plan and put his or her resumé into the appendices.
3. You might be recruiting CEOs to be hired after funding, but you don’t want to hire anybody before you have money to pay. Get the commitment to join now, then the funding and then do the hiring. Find the people now. If they don’t buy into your idea, keep looking. If they’re not excited by the opportunity, then keep looking.
4. Watch for clues. If you can’t find anybody who really wants to join you, then there’s something wrong here. Why not? Have you overvalued your idea? Is this an early warning that investors won’t want it, either? Better to deal with that now, before you’ve invested too much of your time and energy, than later.
5. There’s a site called partnerup.com that is focused on exactly your problem, finding suitable partners and co-founders and, in your case, that CEO. I’ve dealt with the organization, I like the people, and I’m optimistic about the basic idea. It may not have critical mass yet in all areas, but it’s worth a try.

So there are some possible answers to that question. Take your choice, as many of them as work for you.

If things go as they normally do, these venture competitions will be held again for the next venture competition season, beginning this fall and running through next April. If you have connections with any of these, it’s a great experience; I recommend you get into it. Normally you do have to have direct involvement with an MBA-level program, ideally as a student. If you aren’t a student but know somebody who is, you can become involved by recruiting that person onto a team, because each team normally has to include one MBA student.

Idea to Product Competition
Early November
Hosted by The University of Texas at Austin
Contact info@ideatoproduct.org

The John Heine Entrepreneurial Challenge
Early December
Hosted by the Brisbane Graduate School of Business
Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Contact Belinda Hopgood at b.hopgood@qut.edu.au

Georgia Bowl
February
Hosted by Kennesaw State University
Contact Charles Hofer at jrmh@bellsouth.net

Cardinal Challenge
February
Hosted by the University of Louisville
Contact Van G.H. Clouse at clouse@louisville.edu

UC Spirit of Enterprise MBA Business Plan Competition
February
Hosted by the University of Cincinnati
Contact Charles Matthews at ecenter@uc.edu

FGV Latin Moot Corp Competition
March
Hosted by Fundacao Getulio Vargas, Sao Paulo, Brazil
Contact Laura Cristina Pansarella at cenn@fgvsp.br or Rene Jose Rodrigues Fernandes at rene.rodrigues@fgvsp.br

Northwest Venture Championship
March
Hosted by Boise State University
Contact Kent E. Neupert at kneupert@boisestate.edu

Camino Real Venture Competition
March
Hosted by University of Texas at El Paso
Contact Nancy Lowery at nlowery@bnsl.org.

Thammasat Asia Moot Corp® Competition
March
Hosted by Thammasat University, Thailand
Contact Bill Randall at info@asiamootcorp.org.

McGinnis Venture Competition
March
Hosted by Carnegie Mellon University
Contact Art Boni at boni@andrew.cmu.edu

CEDIC New Venture Championship
March
Hosted by the Center for Economic Development, Innovation and Commercialization
Contact Gary Cadenhead at cadenheadg@mail.utexas.edu

Venture Challenge
March
Hosted by the Entrepreneurial Management Center
San Diego State University
Contact Sarah Bonura at sbonura@projects.sdsu.edu

IBK Capital-Ivey Business Plan Competition
March
Hosted by the Richard Ivey School of Business
University of Western Ontario
Contact Eric Morse at emorse@ivey.uwo.ca or Ellen Brown at embrown@ivey.uwo.ca

Wake Forest MBA Elevator Competition
March
Hosted by Wake Forest University
Contact Donna Fulp at Donna.Fulp@mba.wfu.edu

Lunar Ventures
March 28 - 30, 2008
Hosted by Colorado School of Mines
Contact Gary Cadenhead at info@8clunarventures.com

Rice University Business Plan Competition
April 3 to 5, 2008
Hosted by the Rice Alliance for Technology and Entrepreneurship
Rice University
Contact Brad Burke at rbpc@rice.edu

Stuart Clark Venture Challenge
April 3 to 5, 2008
Hosted by the Asper Centre for Entrepreneurship
University of Manitoba
Contact Rob Warren at Robert_Warren@umanitoba.ca

Utah Entrepreneur Challenge
April 5, 2008
Hosted by University of Utah
Contact Leonard Black at Leonard.Black@business.utah.edu

New Ventures World Competition
April
Hosted by the Nebraska Center for Entrepreneurship
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Contact Glenn Friendt at friendt2@unl.edu or entprenshp@unlnotes.unl.edu

New Venture Championship
April
Hosted by the Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship
University of Oregon
Contact Marianne Rosen-Murr at mtmurr@uoregon.edu

Uniandes Moot Corp Business Plan Competition
April
Hosted by Universidad de los Andes, Colombia
Contact Rafael Vesga at rav@adm.uniandes.edu.co

OFC Venture Challenge
April
Hosted by Clark Atlanta University
Contact Mohammad Bhuiyan at 404-880-8657 or ofcvc@hotmail.com

USF-PSI International Business Plan Competition
April 24 to 26, 2008
Hosted by the University of San Francisco
Contact Mark Cannice at cannice@usfca.edu

The post she referred to is “Become a Lifestyle Entrepreneur: Complete Guide and 40+ Resources” by Skellie on Anywired. From the introduction:

The goal of a lifestyle entrepreneur is not to amass a huge fortune, but instead, to achieve certain definable goals and, beyond that point, to ensure business does not interfere too much with the enjoyment of those goals.

In this article, I’ll be outlining the primary steps to becoming a lifestyle entrepreneur, followed by 40+ educational and practical resources you can use to get started.

She defined three types of lifestyle entrepreneurs: Time minimalists, nomadic entrepreneurs and doing it for love. She also gets into how, what tools to use and lots of tips. Like Slim said, it’s very rich.

What will it matter? Honestly, that depends on various factors. It’s too early to tell how much play the posting will get. At the very least, you’ll have an external web reference that you can use to add credibility.

And after all, what do you have to lose?

Startup Weekend recruits a highly motivated group of developers, business managers, startup enthusiasts, marketing gurus, graphic artists and more to a 54-hour event that builds communities, companies and projects.

Founded in 2007 by Andrew Hyde, the weekend is a concept of a conference focusing on learning by creating. It is known for its quick decisions, “out of the box” thinking, unique facilitation technique and letting the founders show what they can do. The program has already met with success in Boulder, Toronto, New York, Hamburg, Houston, West Lafayette, Boston, D.C. and more.

If that sounds interesting to you, I suggest you browse to startupweekend.com and take a look. I found the videos alone entertaining enough to make it hard to pull away from that site and get back to work.

Look for Jake Weatherly there

One of the next ones happening is Portland Startup Weekend, here in Oregon, May 23-25. You can use that link to get more information and to register. And our own Jake Weatherly, Palo Alto Software’s star nice person, is already registered and will be there with sleeves rolled up, ready to work. I’m looking forward to getting his feedback, which I intend to share here.

The schedule also includes San Antonio, Texas, May 16-18; Memphis, Tennessee, May 30-June 1; and Ann Arbor, Michigan, June 20 -22.

The prize? The right kind of audience. Journalists, other opinion makers and, generally, people with money to invest.

For more information, go to launchsiliconvalley.org.

an un-conference networking event to hear from some Web 2.0 authorities, meet other startups and apply to Sun’s Startup Essentials Program. The event also includes Speed Geeking, where startup founders can compete in the Best Startup Contest by presenting a 5-minute pitch of their business to VC led groups of peers. Confirmed guests include: Pete Cashmore, Jonathan Schwartz, David Berlind, Om Malik, Matt Marshall etc. This event is a great way for startups to network and discuss ideas.

The website for that is http://startupcamp.org/ .

Our focus is the global intersections of social and demographic shifts, technology, marketing and economic decentralization.

I discovered this by reading Steve King’s Small Business Labs blog for some time. Steve is part of Emergent Research, and he posted today about the redesign. I’ve used his posts several times for my posts, I like his work, so I visited.

The research is a special treat. If you have any interest in trends affecting small business and entrepreneurship, look at the studies in the Research and Reports section, on the right top. I particularly like the one on the new artisan economy. The two trends pieces are excellent, and there are also several on the future of small business.

How much should I charge for an advertisement placed on my website, if requested? I know it’s a vague question but are there guidelines? If someone wanted me to advertise their store - maybe say, a logo. How much should I charge? Or say an ad with only words? Would it be comparable to an ad placed in a newspaper or magazine?

That’s a question that resonates. Last week I was in a discussion with students who were asking pretty much the same thing. Looking from the outside in, how does web advertising work?

I started to write an answer and then stopped. Wait a minute. That’s got to be already there, on the web. So I did a quick search and came up with “How Web Advertising Works” on Howstuffworks.com. It’s a great resource; like so many others, I’m aware of it, but I don’t use it enough.

This post is a special pleasure for me. I’ve posted a lot on this blog about new businesses, successful startups and interesting business ideas. This particular one, unlike all the others, is about my business, Palo Alto Software, and its new line of business, Email Center Pro. Here’s the “why” page from www.emailcenterpro.com:

Not that I expect you to read that page, but I hope it gives you the idea. Like most of the businesses I like, it’s built around a specific problem, and it solves that problem. In this case it’s that problem of managing the shared e-mail addresses like marketing@paloalto.com, info@paloalto.com or help@paloalto.com. Add real-time collaboration to these shared inboxes. What happens when the person who normally answers that e-mail is out sick? How often does an important e-mail get missed because it’s not clear who’s answering it? How often does an important e-mail get answered twice, once apiece by two people, and with two different answers? That’s the need.

Like a lot of good business ideas, this one didn’t just pop out of the vapor. We’ve been using a system like this for four years in Palo Alto Software, because it’s a problem we’ve had. Until about a year ago, it was just our internal software, written originally in Cold Fusion and managed and updated for years. It took a new management team to recognize the product opportunity in it. Then the team rebuilt it from top to bottom, adding security and reliability by using Amazon Web Services and some other cool Web 2.0 technology, on the foundations of long-term use in a real-world setting. Teams were expanded, management structure was changed, and the Web application became a reality. You can sign up for it, for free, at www.emailcenterpro.com.

Obviously I’m biased on this one, but I like to think it’s a good example of how a business moves from one business offering (business plan software) to a new product area with a very similar target user base. And of how a business implements a new idea.