Starting up in a Credit Crunch

It is hard enough to come up with a unique business idea, let alone see it through to implementation. One of the big challenges is the cost of getting going, as well as meeting existing financial commitments. Oh, and there’s the time commitment too. Statistically, most self employed people work well over 60 hours a week.

With open source, and development licences, the technology costs in getting started are not significant. The OTN licence permits free use of Oracle products while developing an application. Oracle also provides Free and Open Source software products too. Even the Oracle 10g Database can be packaged and distributed in your application for free.

The BIG cost for a start up is expertise. So, even if the technology stack is free, someone needs to be paid to put a scalable, robust and reliable solution in place. Someone needs to be paid to market and sell the product too. Finding such resources is tough, finding the money to pay them is tougher. The author of Go BIG or Go HOME, a book about startup strategies, offers a social network dedicated to startups that seeks to make finding resources, and investment, easier.

As an obvious marketing tie-in, the network is called Go BIG where Angel Investors and people looking for funding to grow their business can meet. The member profiles are quite detailed, allowing an Angel Investor to specify exactly what sort of industries, business types, and geographies, they are interested in providing venture capital for. At this point it is worth mentioning the international aspect of Go BIG. The network is tailored for 11 countries so far. It’s not all about the money though, the network also allows people to get help on business plans, and to promote their own skill sets. So, finding a Flash Developer or an Accounting Assistant is a bit easier. Just a bit though 🙂