"The Most Important Decision for Founders"

Three questions to ask yourself before starting a business or getting attached to a business idea:

What resources are you willing to put in? time, money, risk?
Who do you want your customers to be?
What do you want to get out of this?

I came across these questions in a Seth Godin interview about his latest book The Practice: Shipping Creative Work. The 1st and the 3rd questions make sense. The 2nd one seems less obvious, more unexpected. I assert that this is the most important decision for entrepreneurs:

Who do you want your customers to be? Or your users, students, readers, clients? Who is your thing for? Who do you serve?

The initial appeal of being self-employed is that you have complete control over your time. You decide what to do, when and how to do it. You are your own boss, you don't answer to anyone. However, if our goal is to be successful as an entrepreneur, we should seek to change this as soon as possible. We should be eager to be on the hook for something to someone. The real appeal of doing-your-own-thing then is not that you don't have to answer to anyone, it's that you get to decide who that is. keep reading