1. Testing Your Concept
Mr Kuhn

2. Feasibility analysis
Feasibility Analysis is the process that help an entrepreneur decide whether a new business concept has potential
What it determines:
Is there enough demand for your product?
Are the conditions appropriate for you to move forward with your product?
What it includes:
The industry
The customers
The product and its requirements
The founding team
The competition
The resources needed

3. Testing the industry
An industry is a group of businesses with a common interest
Eg. Retail, restaurant, computer….
When analyzing a industry look out for the following factors:
How is the health of your industry?
Are there any new changes in trends or patterns?
Who are the major players in the industry?
Are there any barriers to entering the industry?
What are typical profit margins?

4. The market and its customers
Your customer base is the most important contributor to the success of your company
It is important that you not only speak to your competitors, but you customers as well
When analyzing a market look out for the following factors:
Target market demographics
Customer profile
Plans for communicating with both the customer and the competitor

5. Testing the product or service requirements
In this section of the testing you must make a prototype or blueprint for your service or product
Even if you do not manufacture something you should still create a blueprint
Example: If you are opening a hair salon or music store you should create a blueprint of the layout of you physical place
This will delved into further during the year
Equally as important is protecting you idea
You can do this through patents, trademarks, and copyrights
We will also learn about this further in the year

6. Start up RESOURCES
When creating a company it is important to investigate how much money you will need for start up resources by calculating the cost of the following:
Purchase or lease equipment, furnishings, and a facility
Buy starting inventory and supplies
Pay employees
Finish product development
Carrying expenses until you make a profit
Immediate profit is not always necessary
Jeffrey Bezos created Amazon knowing that it would not profit for a long time
Strong financial projections and a solid business plan allowed him to make money and get investments

7. Analyzing the value chain
There are many stops your product must go through before it reaches a customer
Manufacturing
Distributing
Retailers
Each of these steps adds to the cost of your product, it is your responsibility to get your product out for as cheap as you can
New technologies such as online stores have drastically minimized the amount companies spend selling their product

8. The competitive Grid
The competitive grid is a five column grid that lets you analyze the competition in your industry
The five columns investigate
Competitor
List all of your direct and indirect competitors
Customer
List the primary target of your competitors
Benefits
What benefits do the customers get from your competitors
Distribution
List ways your competitor gets its product to the customer
Strength/Weaknesses
List your opinion of what the strength and weaknesses of the competitor is

9. Strengths and Weaknesses
Competitive gRID
Competitor
Customer
Benefits
Distribution
Strengths and Weaknesses
Sportscheck
Sportmart
Source for Sports
Mt Waddingtons
Catalog Sales
Nike Online
Walmart