Every venture needs a guide.  These top 10 startup tips will serve as your guide to successfully get your venture off the ground.

1.  Have  A Step-By-Step Plan: 

You should take a very methodical approach to starting your business.  Have a step-by-step plan to follow. 

2.  Know Your Profit Margin: 

Before you start a business you should know whether or not you can sell your product or service at a profit.  After all you're in business to make a profit, hence, it makes sense that you should know what your  profit margin will be before you get started.  Identify how much you have to sell each product/service for; how many products/service you have to sell in order to achieve profitability; and how long it will take you to achieve profitability.

3.  Get Consumer Acceptance: 

Before you mortgage the home, borrow money from friends and family you should make sure that your business idea will gain acceptance.  You should test your product/service in the marketplace in order to get customer feedback and determine if it is something that people like and are willing to purchase.  You can test your product/service by doing a limited roll out to a small group of customers.  Don't just try to get your family and friends to give you feedback.  Get potential customers outside of your circle of friends and family to purchase your product/service and give you feedback.  Rollout and test your product quickly and often in order to identify, fix and test what's wrong with it.  This is know as "fail fast".  This will enable you to get the optimal product that will win consumer acceptance quickly.

5.  Pick A Business Model: 

Don't start a business without knowing what your business model is.  A business model will help you to stay focus on the key areas of the business required to achieve profitability. 

6.  Carefully Chose Partners/Co-Founders: 

Depending on the nature of the business it may be a difficult task to pursue it alone.  You should carefully chose your Partners/Co-Founders.  Choosing the wrong people to partner with can have negative consequences for your business.  The wrong partners could bring you legal and financial consequences.

7.  Start Building The Business Credit Record: 

Your business will require capital to grow.  In order to gain access to capital for your business you have to move away from borrowing on your personal credit record and borrow on the business's credit record.   There are specific things you can do to start building a good credit record for your business.  You should start doing these things right away.

8.  Protect Intellectual Property: 

Identify and protect the intellectual property of the business.  Utilize the patent process, copyright or trademark to protect your intellectual property.  Intellectual property are valuable assets and adds value to the business. 

9.  Know Your Competition: 

Never ignore your competition.  Most of your competition is way ahead of you because they are an already established business, but they can also be another startup.  Your competitors will do anything within their means to out compete you.   They will be on the lookout for you.   You can learn a lot from your competitors as well.  You can learn how they price their products, what demographics they target, what mistakes they've made, etc.

10. Have An Exit Strategy: 

Always have an exit strategy.  Before you enter into a venture you should know what the plan is to get out of it.  Do you wish to run the business until you no longer can, sell it, pass it on to a family member or take it public.  You should be planning what to do if the business is achieving the goals or not achieving the goals.