Ninety days.
Spend them finding out if anyone pays.

The one objective

Get someone who is not a friend to pay full price. Everything else in the first ninety days either serves that or delays it.

A logo does not. A perfected website does not. A minimum way to take money and deliver competently does, and it can usually be assembled in a week.

What comfortable work actually costs

It is not the money spent on it; it is that it postpones the moment you find out whether the idea works. Every week on presentation is a week the core assumption stays untested.

The businesses that survive tend to have found out early and unpleasantly. The ones that fail often looked more professional for longer.

What the engine actually does with this question

This question routes to Startup Genius — one of 29 engagements the platform runs. It does not produce advice in general; it produces this analysis for your business:

✓ Sizes who could realistically buy this — not the size of the industry
✓ Estimates what a customer costs to acquire and what they are worth to you
✓ Tests whether the gap between those two survives contact with reality
✓ Models the cash you need and when break-even actually arrives
✓ Names the assumptions the whole idea rests on, ranked by damage if wrong
✓ Gives the cheapest test that would prove the riskiest one false

You watch the analysis get built before you pay anything. Read a complete report here if you would rather see the depth first.

Questions people ask about this

What should I do first when starting a business?

Try to sell the thing before it fully exists. Talk to prospective customers, make a real offer, and see whether anyone commits. Everything else — structure, brand, tools — can follow the first sale and will be better informed for it.

Do I need a website to start?

You need somewhere credible that explains what you do and how to buy. For most new businesses that is a single page assembled in an afternoon. A larger site is worth building once you know what actually persuades people, which you learn by selling.

When should I register the company?

Before you take money or sign anything binding, and the specifics depend on where you are — worth a short conversation with an accountant. What is rarely worth it is spending weeks on structure before knowing whether there is a business to structure.