What’s the best way to start a company? In my opinion, the best way to start a business is to find a real problem first and then figure out a way to solve the problem. You then need to find the best technology suitable to fix the problem and then build your team based on the technology needed. So often entrepreneurs start a company with a group of friends or people they know and then look around for a problem. Sometimes they find something they thought was a problem that in reality was not, and then instead of finding the best and most appropriate technology, entrepreneurs choose a technology that they feel comfortable with. In other words, instead of building the team and choosing the technology based on the problem and the best possible solution, entrepreneurs build the team first and then choose the technology that fit the team’s skill set. My good friend and partner Ian Clarke (we founded Thoof together) always likes to say, “If you are a hammer, everything looks like nail to you.” It is especially true when it comes to technology. This is the reason that so many very smart people and promising start-ups fail. Does the customer really need this, or we just thought that they might need this, or worse we think that they do need this.
I started uCareer with one goal in mind, to solve a real problem: too many job sites and too little time. Then, I spent a couple of months talking to experts in this area to find the right technology and approach. Now, I am building a team that has the right skill set for this technology. It’s an easy and natural approach for me, since I am one of those entrepreneurs with the right blend of technology, operation and startup experiences and I am one of those who knows technology well enough to make insightful and very informed decisions, but not well enough to be biased toward or against a specific technology.
