How does a ‘passion’ help a new business?
by James Agate
The following is a guest post from Craig Wareham, the CEO and founder of Augmentra, his company’s product ViewRanger helps casual hill workers find their way and enables search and rescue teams to do their crucial work. We have also interviewed Craig previously – read it here
Long nights at work and days away from home often result from trying to set up a new business – so it helps to be pretty keen on the idea behind the business – and to have a supportive family! As it’s probably inevitable that starting a business will reduce one’s social life, aiming to combine business with leisure makes good sense.
The concept that helped start Augmentra derived more from a friend’s hobby than my own. Mike Brocklehurst, who is our CTO, is – or was – a very keen rambler and hill walker. It helps that I also like walking and the outdoors and that we are both very interested in computer graphics.
I have spent a lot of my working life in the computing visuals field and I am personally motivated by the opportunities to use these technologies to present mapping and location-based information to people in a simple visual format on their mobile phone screen. Our selection of the company name Augmentra, derived from augmented reality, demonstrates our thinking. So, Augmentra is not just a technical and commercial endeavour; it is also a deeply enjoyable challenge (several of them really) - a long-term project we have set ourselves.
We’d like to go walking more, but the occasions are naturally rarer now. To compensate, our business – through our consumer brand “Viewranger GPS” – requires us to interact with other walkers as our customers, with the outdoors industry media, representative groups and specialist retailers, which keeps the interest alive and also maintains and updates our knowledge of what is needed. This also helps us to develop a roadmap of future developments that will have a ready market.
If I were advising someone on how to start a business from a passion or interest, I’d say ‘go ahead’ - as long as you’ve done enough preparation and planning first. Having an intense interest means there is a level of knowledge to support the development of the concept and a promise of enjoyment to encourage what may be a long road to the product launch.
So inspiration is great, but a lot of hard-headed business decisions are also needed to turn an idea into a successful company. Starting a business needs market awareness, including what sort of competition exists and what price customers might be willing to pay for a product or application so that development, distribution, manufacture and support, etc. will be financed.
A key element is to be realistic or at least to try, continuously, to think practically and be honest with oneself. Continual re-evaluation of the idea, the market, the price, the competition, the costs of getting to market, is not sexy but is sensible. No angel or bank or other investor is going to give away funding without seeing a viable business plan that shows how the investment can be repaid with profit.
Mike and I lived without a salary for quite a long period before we sold a single app or obtained 3rd party funding. Having total belief in the product and its viability helped us to continue with our investment in the expectation that it would pay off as our business plan took shape.
Personally, I find running Augmentra and growing the Viewranger brand both absorbing and exhilarating – I’d recommend anyone who has an idea and the determination to see it through to go for it.
