Today I was reading about venture capitalism in general and the different approaches that some people take when it comes to funding a business or organization. The one interesting point I thought was that the ones who were most successful were the people that focused more in investing into companies they felt had a good idea and leadership as oppose to people who were so caught up in simply the numbers.

I suppose in many ways that does make sense right? It must be a lot harder too though to invest in things mostly based on if you think it will be good later as the risk is extremely high as opposed to someone that already has a good revenue flow. Then again, I guess that explains why those people are more successful in many ways financially as it’s kind of like the saying of more risk more reward. At the same time, if you are basing it on a person’s track record or leadership background then one could argue the risk should be less.

In many ways I suppose it is similar to shows like Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank where every investor seems to have a different philosophy whee it comes to investing. I would say when it comes to getting funding on the Internet with places like Kickstarter it feels like it is more a people’s platform where it seems like it’s all about the idea and the people behind it. I feel that is how it should be and we need more things like that.

Funny situation I thought. Essentially there was a scenario where there were these two people talking about the business of video creation where one person has been working for a longtime and the other was pretty new. However, the new person was more into online mediums as opposed to traditional offline methods. Then came a conversation about marketing and how each person went out to get customers. The offline person relied more on word of mouth referral whereas the online person focused on social media. For the most part I guess you could say they could learn from each other.

However, the older person was telling the other on how he felt the other was just too young and that he couldn’t really follow his advice because of his age. Yes, crazy huh? When asked to clarify essentially all he really said was that he has lived longer and thus has a more proven track record which means his way is obviously the better way. Wasn’t much to talk about as you can tell.

I personally don’t see why say an older person in any industry would in some way feel threatened if say a young person came in with good ideas that you could implement for your business as well. It’s like an ego fight that should have been left back in high school or something I think. If anything, consider it potentially as a good way to keep in touch with what people are talking about regardless of which fence you are looking from.

Heck, even little kids can teach you a lot in terms of imagination and thinking outside of the box I say.

Today I was reading this post that seemed very common where someone had an idea of sort in an effort to create a business I guess yo can say. However, it seemed like he had the mentality of where he felt that it was good enough that as long as he had the idea a lot of people would donate their time to work with him in making it a reality. I find this to be so common especially online.

I think like with any idea or intent to create anything where you are looking for partners of sort you have to think of it in a way such as what you can bring to the table in terms of skill or work. I have never seen a situation where it is good enough to just say you have an idea. For example, if a person has an invention idea they can at least create a prototype or if one has an idea for a show they can at least do something like the writing aspect.

Of course, on the other side is if you have an idea in a field that you have no training or skill in then usually that would mean you would be the one that would be providing funding to make it happen. It does make me curious at times where people develop the habit of thinking that the role of an idea guy, so to speak, is good enough on its own as that is almost like playing the lottery to a certain extent I say.

I was watching this show that was interviewing this guy who created all these websites that apparently act as dating sites except it’s more about getting rich people to try and say pay for dates to people who claim to be good looking. Of course all the debates about escort services or prostitution came up.

However, what was interesting to me was that this person had so many different businesses that were essentially the same type of concept but with just a different theme. And it seemed like he used the same formula to generate controversy in order to get media attention which ultimately helps his business from what it appears. It kind of made me wonder if he will just say stop focusing in creating so many different spin-offs as you would think it would get out of hand after awhile.

For this particular case too it makes me wonder if the business strategy is more of a take advantage of the market while you can and if it crashes then so what as you made your money. I guess in some ways if making a business is all about the money in the end then you can argue that it would be silly to not keep going until it slows down.

I was reading some comments today about how many people feel a business plan is a waste of time if you are trying to start a project as you are essentially trying to predict the future when you don’t really know how your idea is going to preform in action. Instead, it was being emphasized that what you should focus on is a business model where you are determining how things are going to run. While I guess in many ways you can argue that your business model is usually in your business plan the point was still that many felt you waste too much time trying to predict the unknown.

In many ways it makes sense with the type of opportunities and projects that people try. Especially with projects that are mainly Internet based. For example, if you were trying to sell royalty photos I would think it would be a lot wiser to plan out your general business model in regards to things like the types of pictures and style you will take as opposed to focusing so long on how many sales you want to do for each photo or how much you think will sell.

I wouldn’t doubt too that if you look at some of the more established people who making a living doing things like podcasting or video blogs that they simply just started with an idea and started producing things as opposed to treating it like a Fortune 500 company where you need to plan everything with twenty suits and ties in a boardroom for example. As usual I think usually the worst part of starting out is actually not doing anything. Too much planning and thinking can be a drawback as well.