Starting a Tech Business: A Practical Guide for Anyone Creating or Designing Applications or Software

Conception

It all starts with a simple need or desire. Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg wanted a way to meet girls. Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page envisioned a better way to find things on the Internet. In the same way that the investment advisor Charles Schwab wisely advised us to invest in what we know—and years before that, our high school English teacher told us to write about what we know—your runaway success may be right under your nose. To conceive the next great technology-enabled business, you need to look for something you or your immediate friends and family want or would want but don't have.¹

Although big successes like Facebook and Google are the ones we hear about, it's so easy to deliver high-tech products today that countless smaller successes exist. Though you'll never read about these in Fortune magazine, they have been a genuine success for their creators and their users. They can come in any size: They might be something you do within your current company, or they might be the reason for you to start a new company. The following scenarios illustrate a few possibilities:

• You're a trucker who wants an iPhone app that tells you how long you have until you reach the next qualified service station.
• You're a soccer parent whose spouse and kids are on Facebook, and you want a Facebook app to help organize household activities and shopping lists.
• You operate a chain of dry cleaning stores, and your customers have been asking if they could arrange pickup ...