5 ways to start a company (without quitting your day job)

Interesting post on CNN Money, which albeit being a couple of years old is always pretty interesting. It talks about ways you could legitimately start a new company while leveraging your day job. Here’s what it suggests in a nutshell:

  • Use your salary as funding
  • Turn common complaints into a business plan
  • Make your boss a beta tester
  • Take advantage of your company’s reputation
  • Convert your employer into a business partner

Interesting ideas, especially as more and more companies are encouraging entrepreneurial behaviour in their employees. It’s a bit counter intuitive, but the reality is that the synergies effected through entrepreneurial behaviour can be instrumental to encouraging growth of both sides, and this can apply whether you’re in a company producing indoor lighting fittings, or components for the Space Shuttle. Read the whole thing here.

(Thanks to WorkConnexions for the link)

2 comments

  1. Mmmm … if only it was that simple! In the real world people see “outside work” as a conflict of interest at worst, or a distraction from work at best. And rightly so. But what it actually is is a means to develop skills and experience outside of the budget of the employer and add them to the pool at the office when you return on Monday morning. Starting a business off the back of it in partnership with your employer is not likely for many many people.

  2. @Nathan: Well, you’d be surprised at the number of companies out there who are happy to encourage the entrepreneurial streaks in their employees. Some well known companies like Google, 3M etc make quite a big deal out of it.

    It’s nice to see companies take this stance. The reality is, if they don’t nurture their employees and allow them to climb up Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they’ll just go off and do their own thing, and it’s better to have someone determined to succeed on their end, better have them on your side, then working against you.

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