This will be the first of a four part series about my foray into Entrepreneurship and the major steps I took to make a vision become a reality. The model can be followed by anyone the road is rocky but well worth the journey. Ask yourself what do you have to lose? I hope you answer nothing, because if you answered most anything else you should probably read a different post. The purpose of this will be to first explain my vision, then how I managed to give it legs (the pitch), followed by the project where I explain how I developed it, and finally the launch (the site is live now but is in Beta).

A few years ago I had this idea for a web based way to track my net worth online. All I wanted to to do was be able to track and view my net worth online. That way my pain, why can't I do this online and see how other people my age, sex, or geographic region were doing? Then I started thinking what else do I want to do? Well to go along with my basic excel spreadsheet, I was also forecasting my future net worth and modeling my finances to see how much money I would have at the end of the month if I bought a new car, refinanced my condo, or bought a rental property.

Most new startups are relieving some kind of pain, remove the pain and now your talking about a potential business. My pain was I couldn't do this online so I decided to write a business plan and I started to look online at available domain names, laying down that initial $15 was the hardest thing I ever did (up to that point). So how did I get over the hump? I figured I wasted more than $15 eating out or going to my favorite watering hole. Deep breath... and purchase!

Now I had a very rough draft business plan, a domain name, and I did not know one lick of html!!!! This was one hell of a hurdle I managed to put in front of myself. Then as luck would have it, in my MBA marketing class we had to do a marketing plan. I pitched my team my idea and they bought it, the next post will be how my idea got real legs. Was my business even viable, could it be profitable? We all soon found out.

You should be asking yourself all these questions as you go through the motions of starting your business, think compare the things you are doing to the things I did, did you notice anything I didn't do?

The site I developed is called CapitalCents. Go check it out it's in Beta but hay let me know what you think.