Three requirements to starting a business - (my take)

I think at a very high-level there are 3 things of which you need atleast 2, lets look at them below:

• Skill - Skill in whatever field your business is in, an understanding of the caveats, technologies or intricacies that allow you to stand above the others
• Money - To pay for resources
• Time - To spend on the business in its early days when baby sitting is required

Obviously having all three is ideal but in most cases we have 2 but not all three otherwise everyone would be successful business men. So lets see what you can do with the different combinations:

Skill + Money: Great combination, you know the business intimatly and have a sound understanding of how things should work whether its technology skills, people skills, marketing skills whatever. With skills and money to spend for resources you dont need (as much) time as you can buy time through resouces.

Skill + Time: Another good combination however not as good as Skill + Money. Again with skill you have a sound understanding of how things should work, but without money then you must use time. In most cases it usually means you use your skills to do most of the work in order to save the small amount of money that you have. This works fine bit it generates a bi-product called 'not enough sleep :P)

Money + Time: Another good combination but again not as good as Skill + Money. You can have alot of time and throw alot of money at a project/business and if you have enough of both eventually your business/project will come out alive but i think we have all seen alot of examples of individuals who have alot of money and time but no skills. Sometimes it makes me cringe at the amount of wastage of both those resources when we know with alittle skill it could be done with alot less waste of time and money.

I think i dont have to state what the outcome would be if we only had one of the three pillars listed above but i will do it quickly.

• Money only - Paris hilton
• Time only - Couch potato - TV All day, internet all day, x-box all day
• Skills only - This is actually one of the sadest things, someone with alot of skill but not enough time to put their skills into action and not enough money to buy time through resources. What comes to mind here is most company employees and subject matter experts in a specific highly skilled area such as engineering, marketing etc etc

When we started our startup these things were considered, skill + time is all we had (and time not in that much abundance either, but we make do). So before doing a business or startup, take a look at what you have, if you really want to start a business and only have one of those skills try to somehow make up for the other ....

My 2 cents on the matter :)