"The first of the 3 C's is content. How did Michael Dell define content?"

Listen to the words he uses to to define it for the Detroit Economic Club on November 1, 1999:: "The first stage of content means providing compelling information. This is how we started our online operations in 1993, when we put our technical databases online for customers to access. It was a relatively simple start, but it showed us the tremendous interest from our customers."

At the keynote address at the Southwest Government Technology Conference in 2000, he made similar suggestions to the ones he made earlier in that Detroit meeting. He suggested that they do this as the content stage of going online: "By content, we mean bringing information online. Anytime you have a form, a manual, or a document, put it online. This is the foundation of any Internet strategy. Once we brought information online, it became clear to us where the opportunities were in the transaction world: simple things like order status and commerce, and we have added more complex things over time. The key, again, is that it is experiential and you learn by doing."

If you want to be an entrepreneur, what is the content you already have or what content do you need to develop?

Look at your present or future business from the content perspective? Define your content. Learn from those who have created that kind of content. Do what they did to create it. You need products or services to provide to customers. Make a list of the content they will need to explain, troubleshoot, access, or know about your goods and services. A viable business start-up needs content tied to real-world products or services.

ontent