How do I know that my startup idea will grab success?

Let us break the myth first.

How do I know that my startup idea will grab success?

Let us break the myth first.

The biggest threat to your startup is your “startup idea”. The faster you get outside that idea cocoon, better the chance of survival and building something needful.

Why so?

Because, the word idea is “vague” and the market and the mass want a “solution”, not your “woods on the fire” concept.

Now the question is how will you get there? How will you make the journey from “ideation to solution” without taking a wrong step? Let’s explore if there is any checklist or boxes to tick at all inside the mad world called startup-

The fire in your belly:

Best thing about startup is it will make you restless. Do your so glorified “startup idea” has that force? Here comes the need of having a genuine problem to kick off a meaningful startup journey. With all your might and imagination, you will try to figure out a viable solution.

The solution can be an innovation, out-of-the universe, never-seen, never-heard, never-experienced before stuff or can be an amazing spin on existing way of dealing the problem at hand.

Name it a disruption or call it game-changing, once you get inside the problem, you must have the fire in your belly to grind and go. An ever-burning will do the needful.

Remember, identifying the problem and coming with an “aha solution” or your “favorite startup idea” is just the first baby step of a really long startup journey.

Hunt for a problem:

Legends and folklore to believe, you do not need to hunt at all. You will discover them. Out of the blue, inside the chaos, amid the maddening crowd or in your solitary with your tranquil tea rendezvous.

Want to know the secret sauce? Sometimes, you will not be able to figure out what marvel you have in your hand or brain, to be precise. This is how mystique the startup idea is.

Some Jeff Bezos did not put hours on excel sheet to kick off online book selling and eventually founding Amazon.

One crazy Richard Branson landed upon a weird idea of starting his Virgin airlines inside an airport after missing his flight..

These are your startup ideas. Never planned, suddenly happened, a spark inside your brain.

So, will you wait for that to happen? Never, ever.

Experience the pain and puzzle:

Enter the ring (where problem resides) you want to conquer. Stay there, spend days and nights, if possible a fortnight. Try to figure out what perplexes you most and how you can bring a fix, not a quick one but a persistent solution.

Try to understand you are not the startup hero.

In lieu of that you have the job to save people from a specific headache, you are assigned to find out a solution of a certain life-sucking problem. You will be known by an entrepreneur. So, act like one.

Without experiencing the pain and puzzle, you can not paint a perfect picture. Getting rid of “idea bubble” is so important to go past this stage.

Even the glorified “startup ideas” which happen to come from nowhere is the byproduct of personal experience of going through the nagging problem or getting exhausted by not having desired mechanism/ framework/ solution.

Airbnb founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were having trouble to pay their rent in their new city and seeking an option to earn some quick cash. They found out all hotel rooms in the city were booked due to a local conference. So, they decided to rent their room and landed upon the ideas of Airbnb.

Without being a part of that ecosystem which is creating the problem, you will never be able to think of a solution, or conceiving the idea and slowly metamorphosing it into action and experience the subsequent effects.

Start Small:

If you want to really augment success for your startup idea, put your effort to start small.

We presume, at this phase, you have identified the problem and chalking out a viable solution. That solution as proposed should not be breathtaking but a required framework to resolve the problem. Here, starting small means is not to confine your ideas but stay focused to the core concerns.

Mark Zuckerberg at the nascent stage of Facebook never thought about building a tech empire but his primary hustle was to build up a solution for his university peers. But at the same time, the problem he was dealing was a perennial one, encompassing beyond the corridor of the Harvard University. It helped Facebook to grow big and connect larger audience.

Be your first buyer:

Who else can be? You have experienced the pain, problem and puzzle.

In that journey, you have become a never-satisfied customer or buyer who want something better and meaningful. Now you have slipped into the consciousness of a consumer which has helped you to form your startup cognition.

Bottom line, when you have your idea ready, launch them before your past problems. Have your idea been able to resolve them? No, time to go to drawing board again. If they resolve, let’s target some more buyers.

Sell it to your peers:

At this stage, sell your idea or big concept to your peers or parents or your granny. How lucid you can narrate your concept to them? How prompt or late they react?

Collect all of their feedback.

Document their entire journey- from conceiving your idea to understanding the concept to “Aye” or “Nope”. More information you will gather about their experiences against your idea, your big “startup concept” will be bulletproof.

They are not experts or early adopters but at the same time, they will come to your ideas with one single purposes i.e to solve their basic problem. Treat their problem.

Bottom line, it’s not how you drop their jaw on the floor, it’s about how you solve the problem. Fluffy stuffs dissolve early but functional does not wither quickly. Finding the first ten customers who will understand your idea and show willingness to spend bucks is massively important here. This idea-testing or idea-evaluation is one of the mandatory part for you to understand the pulse of your startup idea.

From our experience, we know how challenging and compelling a startup journey is.

A step missed here and you will be lost in the crowd. But, when you start taking your step carefully and after a thorough evaluation, you minimize the chances of falling fast and hard.

The Biggest Truth

There is no pivot in your startup ideation journey, the route is linear and it will ask you for constant hustle till you go through all the stages that we have suggested here.

Have they helped you? Where do you struggle most and what’s your biggest takeaway from our process? Feel free to share with us.