Many collaborative entrepreneurs wonder if there is a silver bullet that would help them get their company to work right now. And there is a truth that every serial entrepreneur knows. There is a way to “succeed” systematically, and there is a way to “struggle” systematically.

It’s a mindset difference. Those who struggle always build a product before making sure people will buy it. Those who succeed, make sure others really want and buy their new products before they exist.

By selling their product or service before it’s ready, when time comes to build, they know that they’ll create a product or service that people really want. To see what I mean, these are three examples of this mindset applied to entrepreneurial celebrities in their beginnings:

Before creating an airline, Richard Branson got his flight to Puerto Rico cancelled which left him and a few others stranded on an island. He figured he had a problem and went to find a solution. He picked up the phone to find out how much a charter would cost. But instead of paying a whole charter on his own, he divided the price of the charter among the number of passengers and charged them $39 to rebook their seats. He offered the other passengers to pay and they were glad someone took care of it. This pre-sale Branson’s first experience in the airline industry, and the one who led him to create Virgin Airlines.

Before building a company, Steve Jobs also started selling blue boxes that allowed users to get free phone services illegally. First it was a hobby invention by his friend Wozniak. When he realized people were ready to pay for it, he knew he was in business. Then someone tried to rob him at gunpoint (a story for another tab) and he decided to try selling computers, which ended up being another pretty good business for him.

Before Starting Paypal, Tesla and Space X, Elon Musk learned how to run a business and pay his rent by hosting epic night-parties. He first rented a house and threw parties that attracted thousands of college students. Once he knew how to make money with his projects and was comfortable with a business, he either sold it or moved on to something harder and more complex.

In 2005 before turning Arduino into a company, the Arduino founders created micro-controllers to teach their students programming and prototyping with electronics. When they realized people were asking in droves how to buy it, this is when they realized it was time to turn it into a business.

Can you see what’s going on here? They all looked for people interested in what they were offering before they had anything to sell or made any significant investment. They avoided any risk. If you are a budding entrepreneur, you might think that you can skip this step. You know in your gut that everybody wants your idea. But from my experience, as we mentioned in the previous post, this is an excuse that helps us hide from the fear of being rejected or being stolen by others.

OpenROV started with a “simple” underwater robot for submarine exploration and have improved it over time to a much more polished and refined Underwater drone. Open Source Ecology started with a Brick Press to create building materials. Once they validated people needed it, they went on to develop the rest of the Global Village Construction Set to create a new open and ecological civilization from nothing. So don’t worry if your idea doesn’t have a 20 year plan to change the world and a huge community behind it.

First things first. You have found a few ideas. Congrats. Not everyone takes the time to lay them down. Now, if you want to turn them into reality, you must find if people want it enough to pay for your idea. This is hard and challenging. People might not be interested at first. You’ll have to tweak your idea or accept that it’s not a priority to others around you. You might even have to leave your idea and pick another one you had. But you will eventually start to see that your idea can help and have an actual impact on others. And this will be incredibly exciting and rewarding.

The community and the 20 year plan will eventually come after that, if this is what you really want you think is necessary. Don’t worry if you think your ideas aren’t good enough or might be too hard to sell. The real value of this exercise lies in learning how to quickly validate any idea you have. When you know how to validate any business idea, you’ll never wonder anymore “should I have tried this?”.

You may successfully validate your idea or not. If not, your main goal here is to keep moving forward with other ideas and repeating the process without spending a lot of money or time on a website, landing page, app or whatever. You really don’t need it. Just go after the low-hanging fruit and go manual without building a website or hiring anyone until forced to do otherwise.

If you already have a business you want to try, let’s stick to this one. If you don’t have any idea, go back to this post and come up with your own list of ideas. The point is to get started. If you don’t know how much to charge for it, think how much value it brings to the person you want to help, and divide it by 3x or 10x. For example, if you are selling a course, or a product that you know will make the other person $1000, you can easily sell it for anything between $100 or $300.

If you still don’t know how much your product or service is worth, go with $10. You’ll see what are the reactions from people before and after you deliver your services or product. Their feedback will guide you into increasing or decreasing the price. But always make sure that your price is always above your costs to build and deliver the product.

Unfortunately, young children don’t get enough math and science experiences. Even well-regarded programs for young children tend to have a strong focus on language and social development but a weaker focus on math, and little or no focus on developing children’s potential for scientific thinking. What’s more, the small amount of math and science that young children are taught is often not of high quality.

How can we support high-quality math and science learning in a way that’s appropriate to children’s development? The answer lies in seeing that learning progresses along research-based, learning trajectories.

A learning trajectory has three components: a goal, a developmental progression, and instructional activities. To attain a certain competence in a given math or science topic (the goal), students progress through several levels of thinking (the developmental progression), aided by tasks and experiences (instructional activities) designed to build the mental actions-on- objects that enable thinking at each level.

For example, we might set a goal for young children to become competent at counting. A developmental progression means that a child might start by learning simple verbal counting, then learn one-to-one correspondence between counting words and objects. After that, the child learns to connect the final number of the counting process to the cardinal quantity of a set (that is, how many elements the set contains). Finally, the child acquires counting strategies for solving arithmetic problems (up to multi-digit problems, for example, 36 + 12: “I counted 36 … 46 … then 47, 48!”).

Many early childhood teachers aren’t eager or prepared to teach STEM subjects, even though children may be eager to learn them. Historically, teachers of young children haven’t been prepared to teach subject- specific knowledge to young children. In-service professional development also tends not to emphasize math and science, despite the existence of learning standards and increased curricular attention to these subjects.

If teachers are to help young children learn STEM subjects, their professional development must help them explore content and teaching methods in depth. In general, research suggests that effective professional development in early STEM should be continuous, intentional, reflective, goal- oriented, and focused on content knowledge and children’s thinking. It should be grounded in particular curriculum materials, and situated in the classroom.

But all training needn’t occur in the classroom. Teachers also need off-site, intensive training that focuses on the three components of a learning trajectory—goals (the STEM content), developmental progressions, and instructional activities. Then they need time to try out the new strategies in their classrooms, supported by coaches who give them feedback.

The success of our Building Blocks curriculum and other projects can largely be attributed to such professional development that’s organized around learning trajectories. These projects included far more extensive and intensive professional development, ranging from five to 14 full days, compared with the usual one-shot workshop.

Current research in learning trajectories points the way toward math learning that is more effective and efficient—but also creative and enjoyable—through culturally relevant and developmentally appropriate curricula and assessment. However, we still have much to learn about teaching certain topics in math, science, engineering, and technology. We also need to understand better how to improve curriculum and teacher training so that children can realize their full potential in these critical subjects.

Deciding to take your company from sole trader to Limited is a daunting decision but one that can extremely benefit your company in the long run through the thing we all hate the most…taxes. First of all, get your new business company registered, otherwise not only will you be subject to fines if you aren’t registered, but you won’t be able to reap the benefits of tax.

Being self employed, the line between business money and personal money is hard if not impossible to distinguish. The instant benefit of being a Limited Company, a separate entity from it’s owners, is that the liability is transferred from the shareholders onto the company itself, making it an attractive and safe investment for shareholders. This means that with the company being a corporate body it is liable for payments and debt.

Not the owners, not the shareholders. Corporation tax is only payable when the company makes a profit, and the amount of tax saving depends on the net profit before the tax. This technique can be used to the advantage of many small companies, such as the Greek life app developer OurHouse, which makes a fraternity management mobile app for use by colleges. As far as tax goes, with a Limited company, comes lower corporation tax benefits. Over recent years, corporation tax for Limited companies has increased from 20% to 22% whilst sole traders have suffered from a reduction of corporation tax by 2% taking it down to 20%.

The advantage in tax saving stems from the flexibilities of dividends and being able to determine salaries within a Limited company. A sole trader’s basic accounts are subjected to fixed tax rates. Advantages increase for Limited companies in the tax realm when net taxable profit is above the self-employment upper earnings limit. Money can then be left in the business thus becoming only accountable for the 22% corporation tax rate, completely avoiding paying the 40% tax rate as a sole trader.

By forming your company as a Limited Company, it becomes a clear indication to your buyers, shareholders etc that your business is serious. A private limited company advantages over self employment also extends to long term finance. Companies tend to retain more funds within the business to meet future financial commitments which aids year on year growth, a more sustainable business and medium term profits growth over a sole trader.

That appears to be the central claim of Kevin Warsh and Stanley Druckenmiller in a Wall Street Journal column criticizing the Fed’s asset buying program. The central claim appears to be that because asset prices have been rising, companies have been discouraged from undertaking productive investment.

While Warsh and Druckenmiller are certainly right that the asset buying program has had limited benefits for the real economy, it doesn’t follow that the economy would be stronger without it.

First, they misrepresent the wealth situation when they tell readers:

“The aggregate wealth of U.S. households, including stocks and real-estate holdings, just hit a new high of $81.8 trillion. That’s more than $26 trillion in wealth added since 2009.”

The sharp rise in wealth since 2009 was due to a sharp plunge in the financial crisis. The notion of a “record” is misleading since the economy is growing we expect wealth to continually hit records. The ratio of wealth to GDP was 4.78 in the first quarter of 2014. By comparison, it was 4.86 for 2006. The Fed’s policies have simply brought the ratio of wealth to GDP back to pre-recession levels.

More importantly, Warsh and Druckenmiller seem to turn causality on its head when they say:

“Meanwhile, corporate chieftains rationally choose financial engineering—debt-financed share buybacks, for example—over capital investment in property, plants and equipment.”

Lower Interest rates encourage additional investment spending, which gives the economy a boost in times of slow economic growth. The Federal Reserve Board is in charge of setting interest rates for the United States through the use of monetary policy. According to US News, the Fed adjusts interest rates to affect demand for goods and services. Interest rate fluctuations can have a large effect on the stock market, inflation and the economy as a whole. Lowering interest rates is the Fed’s most powerful tool to increase investment spending in the U.S. and to attempt to steer the country clear of recessions.

Ultimately, the Fed uses monetary policy to keep the economy stable. In times of economic downturn, the Fed lowers interest rates to encourage additional investment spending. When the economy is growing and in good condition, the Fed takes measures to increase interest rates slightly to keep inflation at bay. The Fed controls the federal funds rate, which influences long-term interest rates. The federal funds rate is the interest banking institutions charge one another for overnight loans of reserves or balances that are needed to meet minimum reserve requirements set by the Fed. By setting the federal funds rate, the Fed indirectly adjusts long-term interest rates, which increases investment spending and eventually affects employment, output and inflation.

Changes in interest rates affect the public’s demand for goods and services and, thus, aggregate investment spending. A decrease in interest rates lowers the cost of borrowing, which encourages businesses to increase investment spending. Lower interest rates also give banks more incentive to lend to businesses and households, allowing them to spend more.

Low interest rates encourage corporations to invest in stock rather than bonds. If interest rates were higher, then presumably they would do the opposite. Low interest rates (and high stock prices) make it easier to borrow to finance capital investment in property, plants and equipment. It is hard to imagine why they think firms would be investing more, if it cost them more money to make these investments.

The UK vote to leave the European Union whipsawed capital markets throughout the world, but the carnage got so bad in the market for open-ended UK real-estate funds that some managers decided to freeze redemptions.

Now, with some of those redemption halts going into their third month, a debate has surfaced in the industry between the firms that opted to redeem and those that didn’t. The question: Which ones prepared better for the market shock in the months leading up to the Brexit vote and made the smarter calls in terms of opening or shutting their redemption gates?

Consider Edinburgh-based Standard Life Investments, which manages a $2.5 billion open-ended fund that invests in UK property. Standard Life chose to freeze redemptions partly to avoid having to go into the market and sell property at fire-sale prices, according to its executives.

A different approach was taken by Aberdeen Asset Management, which manages an open-ended fund that invests in UK property with assets of about £2.7 billion. Aberdeen temporarily froze redemptions in the aftermath of the June 23 vote, but lifted the freeze by mid-July after setting up new procedures for pricing redeemed units.

Aberdeen also has been able to resume redemptions by selling assets, including a commercial building on Oxford Street. Norwegian sovereign wealth fund manager Norges Bank Investment Management purchased it in mid-July for £124 million.

Maxine Fothergill of Amax Estates notes that Aberdeen fund was marketed to people, many of them small mom-and-pop investors, as an investment that they could buy and sell easily, said Russell Chaplin, chief investment officer of Aberdeen’s real estate team. “They have a reasonable expectation of liquidity in something that’s called a liquid fund,” he said, defending the firm’s decision to continue redemptions.

Experts say there are about 10 open-ended funds that invest in UK property with about £20 billion of assets. About half have halted redemptions. The other half haven’t.

These redemption decisions have got enormous attention following the Brexit vote because many expect UK real estate to be hurt by the country’s decision to exit from the EU. Demand for London office space and residences, for example, will likely weaken if businesses shift operations to continental Europe.

Ms. Fothergill states that the different redemption strategies have clearly become a matter of pride and controversy for the firms. A spokesman for one of the managers, London-based Legal & General Group, said in an email that the firm “is one of the few firms not to close any of their property funds since the Brexit vote and they haven’t been making any fire-sale type disposals”.

Many of those involved in the debate agree that it will take time to determine who was right. Halting redemptions likely will look smart if Brexit’s feared impact on UK real estate doesn’t materialise and prices rebound. But if values continue to fall, selling assets now will look like the right choice.

In any case, the industry’s response to Brexit is expected to be closely studied in the future by regulators and industry participants. A similar review, which took place after the 2008 global financial downturn in which many firms also froze redemptions, led to new regulations and disclosure practices, market participants say.

Open-ended funds have been popular with investors because they offered real estate returns without the volatility facing real estate companies with listed shares. They based their pricing of units on monthly appraisals of the property they owned.

Over the past 10 years, bnnbloomberg.ca says that these funds have outperformed listed real estate stocks, according to John Lutzius, a managing director of Green Street Advisors. They have produced better returns partly because they charged investors relatively low fees and they have kept borrowing low, he said.

But the funds also have suffered from a structural flaw, Lutzius said. “They are making a promise of daily liquidity for assets that are inherently not liquid,” he said.

Some of the funds have dealt with this issue by increasing the amount of the fund that is in cash by selling assets when more redemptions are expected. For example, Aberdeen had increased its cash position to more than 20% of its value in the months leading up to the Brexit vote because the firm felt that the market had hit its peak.

Normally, cash makes up about 15% of the fund. “You never know when these things are going to come,” FPRA.org declares. “But you know at some point, if things are slow, people are going to want to have their cash.”

But increasing cash isn’t enough of a precaution when investors rush for the door following a market shock like Brexit. Aberdeen also is dealing with this through “antidilution” measures that apply an extra cost to investors who want to redeem quickly, Chaplin said.

“It’s no different to selling your house,” he said. “If you wanted to sell it tomorrow, you probably wouldn’t get what you were told it’s value was” by a real estate agent.

They were dead set on changing the way you book your travel. In the building next to me on the Microsoft campus in 1996, there was a team that was absolutely convinced they would radically alter the travel industry by allowing customers to directly access a huge database of flights via the web. It turns out they were right, and within a few years, Rich Barton, who led the team, convinced Steve Ballmer to spin the project called “Expedia” out of Microsoft.

Expedia and its competitors did go on to change the world of travel. Their user-friendly interfaces to databases, once reserved for professionals, gave us a self-serve option for booking flights, hotels, and car rentals. In the process, they seriously shook up the travel industry, knocking out a large portion of the travel agent profession.

In the United States, there are currently around 13,000 travel retail locations, down from a peak of 34,000 in the mid-1990s when Internet travel websites were just getting started. The real toll, though, is most visible when you look at Department of Labor statistics on actual employment in the travel agent sector. There are now less than half the number of travel agent jobs than there were just two decades ago.

Automation is never a simple story. What creates traumatic economic displacement for some, often brings convenience and lower prices for others – and sure enough, the cost of air travel has dropped significantly over this same period. Of the top twenty markets, Las Vegas and Phoenix are the only two cities were prices have actually increased. For the remaining eighteen, prices have all fallen. On average, airfares in these top twenty markets last year were 30% less than they were twenty years earlier.

Airline deregulation undoubtedly played a critical role in these airfare decreases, but there also seems little doubt that the easy comparison shopping that services like Expedia has enabled is also an important factor.

Technology giveth and technology taketh away. Those travel agencies that survived had to move up market, away from purely transactional ticket-booking to more consultative services, where domain expertise and the ability to provide useful advice really mattered. I actually used a firm like this earlier this year on a family trip to China and it was quite valuable.

But now, even these firms may soon be at risk, thanks to new computing technologies that will gradually take over some of the domain expertise in travel.

The first wave of automation to hit the travel agency market was transactional – the result of giving end users direct access to a reservations database. This next wave of automation builds on the first wave, but is knowledge-based and relies on a new layer of artificial intelligence.

This next wave of automation will replace travel agents with “personal travel concierges,” able to sift through mountains of information to give you tailored advice on how to plan your trip. That, at least, is the plan of the startup called WayBlazer.

The most interesting thing about WayBlazer is that it has the Jeopardy-winning IBM Watson under its hood. WayBlazer’s not yet on the market: its first prototype application will be for the Austin Convention & Visitors Bureau, but you can get a taste for what the user interface might look like on its Formula 1 racing app.

One thing worth noting about IBM is that it is rolling out Watson services as a business-to-business offering, targeting vertical industries through partnerships in retail, several healthcare applications, talent management, and now travel. The only way that you will get to experience IBM Watson artificial intelligence is through an IBM partner. Even WayBlazer, a Watson partner itself, will only be available through partners, rather than its own consumer-facing website. This is what you might call a ‘vertical’ strategy for the artificial intelligence market.

Contrast that with what companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and LinkedIn are likely up to, which is more of a ‘horizontal’ strategy for artificial intelligence. They won’t deep-dive into specific vertical markets, but instead choose broader, more utility-like approaches for processing the broad range of topics their end users are likely to need. Your interaction with the artificial intelligence may feel a bit different across these services, but this horizontal approach will be part of the way you make sense of the world. It will become an increasingly central part of your relationships with these companies and the value you derive from their services.

So, when it comes to using artificial intelligence to help you plan your vacation in 2018, will you use a general purpose artificial intelligence with Google or Facebook, or will you work through some entity like an airline or local tourism bureau, using an industry-specific artificial intelligence like WayBlazer and its Watson engine?

In the short-run, it’s very possible that a vertical approach like WayBlazer might produce superior results. My bet, though, is that competitive advantage in the artificial intelligence market will depend on having a high volume of user interactions. Today’s machine learning approaches to artificial intelligence learn and improve by interacting and getting feedback from people, and that means the technologies with greater scale in user interactions are more likely to learn faster. That’s why, in the longer-run I’m betting that Google, Facebook and the horizontal players will eventually have the edge over IBM.