entrepreneurship through java

Hello everyone!
I want to become an entrepreneur So, can java help me fulfill my dream. I am studying java these days and liking it very much. I am learning swings presently and have developed few very small applications like a calc and an online exam application statically. My purpose of mentioning these things is that if someone is affluent in the practical aspect of the language then can he make big in his life ? Please guide me.....

I am not the most qualified person to answer your questions as I am still at my job.

Sure, Java can help you.

But , I think that is irrelevant. What is relevant is if you can identify a problem you'd like to solve and can find a solution to do it, you can be one.

I recommend hanging out at forums where that startups are the main focus, talk to people who have done it and read books.

I cannot overstate the importance of talking to entrepreneurs and reading books.

Example : http://37signals.com/svn

The way I see it is that --

Java is a tool. You can use this tool to a great idea you have. You can easily hire or recruit someone who knows how to use this tool, but it is harder to
hire someone who already has a great business idea or a domain to which it can be successfully used. This is where you come into picture. Your commitment, passion, willingness to take risk, ability to look at opportunities, ability to come up with good ideas, ability to act, and many other qualities. These qualities are not easy to come by. I am too scared to take risk, hence very hard to bcome an entrepreneur. I prefer a good night sleep

There is no guarantee that if do job in India and you will not get exploited at low salary and you will be able to sleep happy, there is no guarantee if you do a job, your career is 100% safe, and there is no guarantee you will be able to do good career unless you understand how people in job industry work. There is risk in India even when you are crossing a road (sometimes not even crossing a road). How you mitigate risk is up to you. Nothing in the world is 100% safe.

want to become an entrepreneur So, can java help me fulfill my dream.

If you have a business idea then it doest matter what tool you use....
Remember Mark Zuckerberg (Founder of facebook) ...He developed facebook platform with php ....
So did php helped....no....It is his business idea and his passion for socializing helped him to come up with this platform where ppl can meet each other virtually.

Being an entrepreneur is 100 times tougher than to be an employee. Starting a business is not a big deal but make it run is.... You should be ready for anything, besides nowadays business only runs if you provide very innovative service/product to your customers...and you should enjoy monopoly for at least a span of 2-3 years . Thats my 2 cents.

Wish you a good luck.

Welcome to JavaRanch

If you want to go from place X to place Y and you do not know how to go , then best thing is to ask to the person who has done it already, not to the person who has never done it. Point is , majority of people at this forum are not entrepreneurs, many of them might not even thought about it. So this is not right place to ask for advice on entrepreneurship. You will get many negative answers. First step would be start collecting information. Read articles. Get advices from real entrepreneurs not through internet forums. Because this is something different. It requires, thinking, concept, solution, gap, strategies to fill gap, implementation of strategies .....
Good luck.

@OT : Not to dampen your enthusiasm, but according to my theory, you have 2 ways to become an entrepreneur:
- through "inheritance" (pun unintended)
- one fine day that bolt of lightning strikes you when you KNOW your idea is good, and you have enough experience to visualize & materialize it (in your case programming experience).

IMHO, it is not possible to DECIDE you wan't to be one, and work towards being one.
Last but not the least, It is not impossible though. Your first aim should be learn as much as you can, if after many years you still have that entrepreneurship worm in you, you might even get some ideas.

Good luck.

entrepreneur = business owner

A good understanding of marketing, finances, human resources, advertising, fedral, state and local business and tax law will help an individual to become a successful entrepreneur (business owner) in the U.S.A. Learning a computer programming language has very little to do with the process of forming and running a business.

Jimmy Clark wrote:A good understanding of marketing, finances, human resources, advertising, fedral, state and local business and tax law will help an individual to become a successful entrepreneur (business owner) in the U.S.A.

Or a good understanding of which of these to pay for outside help with. Generally speaking, the ability to create a great product and make customers aware of it are the two most critical skills. Anything else can be obtained.

Cheers!

Luke

Parag Pathak wrote:There is no guarantee that if do job in India and you will not get exploited at low salary and you will be able to sleep happy, there is no guarantee if you do a job, your career is 100% safe, and there is no guarantee you will be able to do good career unless you understand how people in job industry work. There is risk in India even when you are crossing a road (sometimes not even crossing a road). How you mitigate risk is up to you. Nothing in the world is 100% safe.

I can't agree with you more on this...the way the human system works, there is always a cost/risk if you choose to do or not do one thing over the other...an opportunity cost...if you are an investor you might lose money if you sell your asset or hold on to your asset depending on the price of that asset at that point...you might get stuck in a job which doesn't pay you good enough and after a long period one day you may find that there are others who are far ahead in the race and you are relatively poor...you might choose path of a business and you might do better than all those who stuck to the so called safe jobs...all it depends on what you chose to do or not to do and how the things unfold from then onwards...

Cheers!

KP

Interesting question! The entrepreneurship is a very broad term, in fact you do not have to learn computers to be a entrepreneur.
The raw idea of entrepreneurship is to earn big money and having people working under/for you. In my opinion, earning the first
customer is most difficult thing especially in IT sector. I was in pre-sales some time back, whenever we give demo to potential
customers, the first question they ask is who else implemented our product. Since we are new in the market, we couldn't succeed.
So, if you want to achieve entrepreneurship in IT you either build a product in Java or .Net (concept and working product important
rather than technology) or offer services to clients. In both cases the competition is peek now a days as compared to before like in the year 1990.

Second comes the biggest part, the investment. If you have a killer idea then who will trust you and invest money? So you need an idea,
a working prototype and a venture capitalist who likes the prototye and willing to invest money to build a working product based on
proven prototype.

And many other factors involved, if any other person builds the same product and your chances of winning are lesser and lesser. Now a days,
big companies have resource pools and they can build big applications within few days. All they need is a little idea. The following are the
high level steps to achieve entrepreneurship in IT.

1. You need an idea.
2. Do some research to know whether the very same idea is already in the market or not.
3. Conceptualization of the idea, domain model.
4. Working prototype. This is mandatory atleast to show it to potential VCs.
5. Time to market the product.
6. Sales team and marketing strategy.
7. If you want to work on product you need to sacrifice your job to sit on it full time.
Are you able to support you/family during this period? Are you able to survive without salary for few months.
8. Legal terms between you and your VC. If your product didn't click in the market, you should be able to save
yourself legally since VC spent significant money believing your idea.
9. And many more factors I coudn't think of.

Bottm line is there are positive and negative sides. I had seen starups succeeded and failed. I joined in startups
those failed badly due to wrong decisons made in wrong times. So, if you have an idea, you really think it will
succeed in the market, go for it. Expect the best and prepare for the worst.

Summarized well Sai.