Open-sourcing an e-preneur venture
An e-preneur venture goes through various stages of planning and development. This includes the idea stage, developing the concept and then the platform, marketing, planning for expansion and growth, innovation and even possibly a redesign stage. All of these stages can be implemented or enhanced using open source tools.
The idea stage: Think of starting a venture, and millions of ideas bloom. However, only some of these ideas are actually IHDsLEOH RU SUDFWLFDO. (YHQ DPRQJ WhH IHDsLEOH RQHs, fiQGLQJ that one unique and original idea is like looking for a needle in a haystack. Idea-management tools can prove to be a blessing at this stage. Write down all your ideas (even the stupid ones). Sharing these with your partners and grouping them are some of the features that these tools provide. Ideatorrent (http://drupal. org/project/ideatorrent) and BBYIDX (http://bbyidx.com/) are two great open source idea management tools.
The concept stage: Once an idea has evolved from the idea stage, it enters the concept stage. At this stage, it Ls IXUWhHU UHfiQHG DQG LPSURYLsHG XsLQJ YDULRXs WRROs sXFh as brainstorming, focus groups, etc, and is converted into a concept. Using brain mapping and collaboration tools can help speed up this stage. The best open source tool for brain mapping is FreeMind (http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/ index.php/Main_Page). Add to this the power of collaboration with Collabtive (http://collabtive.o-dyn.de/) and create a concept out of your idea in no time.
The platform development stage: A concept, once approved, enters the next stage of platform development. Selecting the technology to build the online platform and developing it is an important element of this phase. HTML5, CSS3, jnuery, PHP and MySnL, are some of the best open source technologies available to develop your platform. Open source PHP frameworks like Codeigniter (http://ellislab.com/ codeigniter) and CakePHP (http://cakephp.org/) can be used to build robust e-commerce portals. User interfaces, or the look and feel of the platform, can be designed using the GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/) DQG WhH BOXHfish HGLWRU (Http://BLuEfisH. opEnoFfiCE.nL/LnDEx.HtPL). If you wish to go completely open source, use any of the open source Linux (Ubuntu, Mint, etc) flDYRXUs Ds WhH EDsH RSHUDWLQJ sysWHP.