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Ed - This is guest blog post by Gareth Knight - http://www.oneafrikan.com/ - he founded Kindo which is now MyHeritage, amongst others.  Gareth is heading back to SA from London very soon.  Watch this space....

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Starting up is a state of mind, and a way of working. Nothing more.

Without exception, my experience has been that most people have some amount of fear around starting something up. And this is what holds them back, everything else in my opinion is an excuse to justify that fear. Good entrepreneurs take the first risk, then limit as many risks after that as possible.

Most folks talk about not having a great product to start with, or they say that they don't have that killer idea that will challenge Google or Yahoo or Microsoft or Dell or Salesforce or Twitter or Facebook. Unfortunately, very few ideas ever will be able to take on the 800 pound gorillas of the world, so there isn't any point being hung up on that or limiting yourself to starting because of that, but there are thousands of other ideas and opportunities that are viable locally and globally if you're willing to put in the work. Ideas are cheap, execution is everything.

The most important thing that you can do is to just start, and then accept that where you start will probably not be where you end up. Once you've started, you're free to react to new demand and develop new ideas, and this is the opportunity I think most people miss. Always be closing.

The most important thing you should do to mitigate this fear, and do it persistently every day, is to stay adaptable, be willing to change direction when something isn't working, and most importantly scale up on opportunities when they are working! If you're going somewhere you don't want to be, you don't want to get there faster.

Once you've started, the challenge is working without the infrastructure and support you may have been used to in a corporate environment, or starting without any idea of how a company should be run to be efficient. In both cases, you want to limit waste and reduce inefficiencies as much as possible, whilst finding people to compliment your skillset, so that you free up time to actually work. Installing a printer is not work; billing clients or writing code for your product is.

During the first year to 18 months, the best thing you can do for yourself and your startup, is to remain as pragmatic as possible, be as frugal as you can with cash, and be as vocal about your product or service as your personality will allow. You don't have big marketing budgets, you probably won't have a PR company working for you, and in the early days people will be buying from you, so they have to feel that you are genuine and passionate about what you are doing. Be realistic about what you're doing, and be vocal. Get to breakeven as quickly as possible with good cash management.

Which brings me neatly to my last point: if you're not passionate about what you're doing, you're not going to be able to get anyone else passionate about it, from co-workers, to buyers, to suppliers. I would venture that passion and persistence are the only essential ingredients you need, everything else can be learned or bought.