Budding tech entrepreneurs – here’s a tip: ignore the dollar signs.

When sitting down to plan a start-up, most eager entrepreneurs start with writing a business plan and financial model, and then look at what that exit will be after dilution of a few rounds of investing.  Yet, this rarely provides break-through companies.  In some sort of weird karmic business law, the most widely successful ventures don’t start with an idea of how much the founders will exit out with.

Case in point: Apple, Google, Facebook, (and maybe even Twitter).

The common factor in all these giants is that there was no clear-cut path to profitability when they started.  In fact, if you go back and read the history of these companies you’ll see that they were geeks (Steve Wozniak) playing with the  technology that they wanted in their daily lives. Case in point: Wozniak wanted a computer, could build one, and set about making democratizing this tool to the masses. (See origins of Apple)

So here’s the kicker….

Build something you need: what do you wish you had in your life to make it easier?
Exercise: Define a common daily problem and brainstorm the solution using technology…
For example, let’s say you’re a parent.  Your kids mean everything to you and keeping them safe is your top priority.  What technology could help you achieve this?

• Problem: Monitoring your kids at different stags in life.
• Possible Solutions: A GPS app to monitor your kids when they get their driver’s license. Yep. That could scale and is being done. Or how about a vital signs monitor for newborns that updates to a web server via your home WiFi and you can check via your phone.

By focusing on building a “killer app” with a remarkable solution, the money eventually comes.  Note: this may not be on the timetable that an angel investor or VC wants.

The whole trick here is to identify a problem that lot’s of people have.