Many of the best ideas for businesses and products come from geeks who may not know how best to pursue them. How do you go from having an idea for a better use of small hard drives to having it be the next iPod? We'll take the perspective of a technologist who wants to learn how best to build a business out of an idea.

In this tutorial, O'Reilly's Entrepreneur in Residence Marc Hedlund provides short topic overviews and leads longer, informal discussions on: evaluating your ideas as business opportunities; choosing how to pursue your idea; talking to "business" people about your idea; market research and interviewing; deciding to start a company; choosing team members, team size, and partners; getting funding for a company; the first release; what is this "marketing" of which you speak?; success or failure, and the area in between; going big or selling out; and more.

The bias of the presentation will be towards software products, but the ideas apply generally to taking any technology to market.