Weekly Business Insights from Top Ten Business Magazines | Week 301 | Entrepreneurship Section | 2

Extractive summaries and key takeaways from the articles curated from TOP TEN BUSINESS MAGAZINES to promote informed business decision-making | Week 301 | June 16-22, 2023.

This Is Where Great Startup Ideas Come From:   If you want to know if your startup idea is any good, these are the questions to ask.

By Joe Procopio | Inc Magazine | June 20, 2023

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Any experienced entrepreneur will tell you: Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Even so, a lot of entrepreneurs, inexperienced and experienced alike, will dive headfirst into building out an idea they fall in love with, before asking themselves the one question that one gets from entrepreneurs the most often: “Is my startup idea any good?”  Ask yourself “What makes you think it’s good?”

Cool Ideas Versus Must-Have Products.  There’s nothing wrong with chasing a cool startup idea, or falling in love with a startup idea without any due diligence or R&D. But at some point, definitely before we get too far down the execution road, we need to take the time to validate the idea outside of our own heart and brain.

Invent a Great Product.  Would your product be successful if it existed?  The best way to start proving the idea is to ask the question: “Well then, why doesn’t it exist yet?”  If the success of the product seems like a no-brainer once it exists, there’s probably a multitude of reasons why no one has attempted to make a business out of it. Understand and then figure out how to overcome those reasons first.

Capitalize On a Massive Market Shift.  Is the market for your idea small now but could quickly grow to be massive? This is the trendspotting path to entrepreneurship – be the first to market and the best solution for the one percent of trendsetters, then be in position for the windfall when the mainstream catches up to the early adopters.  This involves making some educated but risky guesses about trends in the overall market for your product.  It helps to have intimate knowledge of the market you’re trying to fit the product into, either by having a lot of experience being a part of it, a good deal of experience selling into it, or spending a ton of time talking to potential customers in it. 

Disrupt an Aging Industry.  Is the target industry overdue for change and modernization?  In the aging industry idea garden, the timing of the execution is just as important as the brilliance of the idea, even more so.

Maximize Talent and Figure It Out.  Sure, having maximum talent is also a mandatory requirement to get to growth.  But don’t fall into the trap of “if you assemble the team, great things will happen.”  A lot of college entrepreneurship not only but also with veteran startups bring in experienced, talented people who are just wrong for the idea and the business, and bad things happen.

It’s Not Just One Single Idea.  You need an idea on top of the idea.  So once you get your brilliant idea, and you prove it, you should constantly be coming up with dozens of additional ideas to build upon your original idea, and be ready to prove those ideas are brilliant as well.

2 key takeaways from the article

1. Any experienced entrepreneur will tell you: Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should. Even so, a lot of entrepreneurs, inexperienced and experienced alike, will dive headfirst into building out an idea they fall in love with, before asking themselves the one question that one gets from entrepreneurs the most often: “Is my startup idea any good?”  Ask yourself “What makes you think it’s good?”
2. The following can help:  instead of a cool idea try to have must-have products, invent a great product, capitalize on a massive market shift, disrupt an aging industry, maximize talent and figure it out, and you need an idea on top of the idea.

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Topics:  Startup, Entrepreneurship, Ideas