Since the programmes "Dragons Den" and "The Apprentice" have come out, I've got one friend who has started up a business reclaiming bank charges, another as a headhunter, a third as a used car trader, and a fourth as a web-based data backup service. Have you noticed any or many of your friends and significant others going down this route recently? What sort of things have they started, and has it been a success for them?
Its not that I mind that per se, but the trouble is I've decided to do it as well, and I don't want the competition.
. Three months ago I took voluntary redundancy from a firm (I was a permie 
) and spent the first 6 weeks on holiday, and the second six weeks writing some code hopefully to sell as a web service.
I've had the idea for the past 4 years and only now have had the time to implement it.
My concern is that there are alot of sites that do stuff related to what I am doing, although none that do exactly what mine does. If all these sites have been created by people who have had an entrepreneurial idea then they are going to get in the way of my idea as companies are going to get flooded with "entrepreneurs" cold-calling them all the time.
On another subject, all the time that I'm trying my idea, my skillset (Microsoft SQL Server admin) is perhaps starting to get eroded over time? How long does it take for employers/clients/agents to start thinking that a contractor has started to "forget" skills and therefore be less employable? 3 months, 6 months, two years?
Cheers,
KentPhilip
Its not that I mind that per se, but the trouble is I've decided to do it as well, and I don't want the competition.
. Three months ago I took voluntary redundancy from a firm (I was a permie ) and spent the first 6 weeks on holiday, and the second six weeks writing some code hopefully to sell as a web service.I've had the idea for the past 4 years and only now have had the time to implement it.
My concern is that there are alot of sites that do stuff related to what I am doing, although none that do exactly what mine does. If all these sites have been created by people who have had an entrepreneurial idea then they are going to get in the way of my idea as companies are going to get flooded with "entrepreneurs" cold-calling them all the time.
On another subject, all the time that I'm trying my idea, my skillset (Microsoft SQL Server admin) is perhaps starting to get eroded over time? How long does it take for employers/clients/agents to start thinking that a contractor has started to "forget" skills and therefore be less employable? 3 months, 6 months, two years?
Cheers,
KentPhilip
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