BusinessEd

Sales

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Sales is essential to success. Nowadays, a prevailing notion is that AI can and will do everything, but selling is primarily a “soft skill” that relies heavily on adapting to subtle cues—not exactly AI’s forte.

Running a business entails selling. In fact, every company relies on sales. Even in businesses that ostensibly rely on other roles, like product development and support, those roles are ultimately supporting sales; giving sales something to sell and helping the customers.

When building a business of any size, it’s essential to sell something. I see discussions around “PMF” as entrepreneurs seek to identify markets, but an extremely important facet of that is remembering that when a product fits a market, there is still work to be done. Specifically, even when PMF is achieved from the product standpoint, somebody still needs to sell it, which is likely to kick off new rounds of: feature requests, revisions, advertising/marketing, customer profiling, and so on.

Budgets

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Budgeting is essential when planning and/or running any business. At the most basic level, you want to assure that if you spend $1, you get more than that in return. This is how you know you have a business and not a hobby.

In order to run a business well, you need to know how much things cost and how long they take. If you can quantify them well, you can compare them, allowing you to evaluate them.

Requirements

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When launching a business, you have many requirements to consider. First you have multiple tiers of laws: city, state, and federal. In general, you will have to comply with all of them, but non-compliance consequences range significantly. For instance, is it a law or an ordinance? Is it not a rule at all but a best practice? As an example, my background is cybersecurity, and there are many _guidelines_ that aren’t _laws_ but carry a lot of authority within industry. You don’t _have_ to follow them, but you can bet no business customer is coming anywhere near you unless you comply.

When assessing your own “product market fit,” you will want to assess your own position in the marketplace. For instance, if you sell consumer goods, you will have significantly different considerations. However, as the producer of those magnetic balls that were all the rage until some kid swallowed one can attest, the government has a lot of opportunity to assert its preferences in commerce. And numerous companies that facilitate gambling can assure you the line that divides “right” and “wrong” can be very blurry and subject to a legal interpretation.

In summary, requirements should be clearly defined in their context, and the context should also be defined and acknowledged.