Where To Find Great Startup Ideas
You may always wonder how you should start your own business startup as you always see yourself as next disrupter in the market place. You always knew you are destined for something far more greater than a nine to five job and you want to change the world for better. However, there is only one issue between you and achieving your goal. How should I come up with a brilliant perfect idea for my startup.
The process normally starts with you searching the internet for ideas that are waiting for somebody to start working on them. Also, you may read the story of great business legends like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk to find out what was their secret sauce and how they could build billion dollar empires and how they tackled the industry issues with the aim to be inspired with your idea.
Although these tactics may work for some people, I suggest another way of thinking which is more structured. If you can follow these steps, you can find your next business idea much more easier and the important part is, it is aligned to your character and passion as well. If you can align your startup idea with your personal passion and also your day to day job, you are increasing your chance to become successful. Just remember that the odds of success for startups are very low. This does not mean that you should stop thinking about changing the world and of course I am not trying to be negative, but to be aware of the hard work that is coming after launching your business idea. This means you need to be ready and prepared for what is coming.
Practice business on a daily basis
Just a friendly reminder that launching startup is not all about having a grand idea of all time. It is more about starting and operating a business. If you do not like to run a business or you do not know how to deal with business operations on a daily basis, or in short, if you do not love business, you will have hard time dealing with startup challenges moving forward. Apart from the idea that you want to work on, remember that you have a business to run and you need to be on top of it.
Start educating yourself on business topics every single day. Do not miss a day. It is important you educate yourself and learn as much as you can about branding, marketing and sales so you increasing the chance of your success after coming with the idea. This step may not lead to your grand business idea directly, bus it is crucial for you to dedicate yourself to learn and practice business as much as you can. Plus, there is a high chance you start meeting like minded people and potentially your co-founders as well while you are going through the learning experience.
Highlight problems in your day to day job
If you like what you do as a day job, there is a big chance there are still lots of issues and problems that are remained unsolved and waiting for somebody to come up with an idea on how to solve them. Instead of jumping around and looking for things that are not really related to you, simply have a more deeper look at the environment that you are working in now and see how you can make things better.
Think of how you can bring more value to the current solutions and make it almost impossible for people to resist the idea of using your products or services. Think of ways you can bring more transparency or trust to the process. How you can make things more secure or even how make things simple to solve a problem in a different way so your target do not have to think about this problem anymore. Remember if there is an actual pain and the problem is so serious that people are happy to pay for a solution, you have a great chance of success.
Plus, finding something connected to your existing job, means that you already have a rich network of connections that you can benefit along the way as your target market or in any other capacities.
Hire a mentor
This is one of the most important things to do even before thinking about starting your own business. Having the right mentor will fast track things for you. It will open up doors that you could never imagine and will connect you to resources and people that you could never have. Your mentor can always give you shortcuts that otherwise it takes you a long time to solve without him or her. Even if it means for you to pay your mentor, it is absolutely important for you to commit to yourself and your growth to have somebody that already did this before and ready to show you the path.
Network outside of your industry
Many people think that they should only look at what is going on and the innovations inside their respective industries. They believe that things outside of their industry are either irrelevant or out of date and it will be a waste of time to do so. Surprisingly, this is not true. You can find a lot of great ideas on how to run a successful business by looking at outsiders and how they could get competitive edge over their competition. You can simply apply some of these tactics and strategies in your industry context and come up with ways to disrupt your current target market. This way you are opening whole new possibilities to yourself on how to do things differently and how to make a solid value proposition for your potential customers.
I am business strategist and recognized authority on digital transformation focusing on enterprise businesses and startups. Follow me on Twitter @houmanasefi, and visit my blog https://www.houmanasefi.com to get the scoop on business trends.
