Business whiz: I want to start a business! I want to be my own boss.

Techie: Well do you have an idea?

Business whiz: I don’t, but I know ‘how to brainstorm for ideas’ ( http://bit.ly/ideas1 )

Techie: You do that, let me know when you have one.

— 30 minutes later —

Business whiz: Darn. I’m on my own. I don’t really know where to start, but let me look at ‘trends to watch for 2010’ ( http://bit.ly/follow_trends )

Business whiz: Number 1 trend to watch – Economic Turmoil. Ok that’s a start.

Business whiz: Hey. I have an idea. How about we build a website to help users track spending?

Techie: Sounds easy, but why would anyone want to track their spending online. Aren’t there spreadsheets and accounting programs for that?

Business whiz: That may be true, but we’ll ‘make it viral’ ( http://bit.ly/viral-startups ) and strike up partnerships to sync the user accounts with their bank statements.

Techie: I’ll join you and start building it, but I still feel we need to make it more special. Maybe, provide recommendations of how they can save money.

Business whiz: Cool. You do that, let’s start small and build up our business. No good idea that changes the world is regarded as one from the start.

— 3 years later —

Business whiz: Now that we’ve sold our company for $170 million , what do you think was the key to our success?

Techie: I think we benefitted from taking it slow. Someone once said, “Great ideas come from rested minds” (http://bit.ly/rested_minds )

Business whiz: I think it’s b‘cos we make a great team. ( http://tcrn.ch/finding-cofounders )

– P.S. See if you can guess which start-up this story is very loosely based on.