Is Your Business Idea Valuable?

Is your idea worthy to be turned into a startup?

You feel like you have to be your own boss, start your own business and run it. You want to realize your dreams and get people to join in and eventually become customers who like your products or services. But you are not sure whether your idea is valuable enough to really turn it into a working business model. Does this sound familiar to you? This question is probably one of the hardest – if not the hardest – on the journey to found a startup. I want to share my views on this topic with you, maybe it will make your decision a bit easier.

First of all: you will not have one idea which is THE idea for a startup.

This may be not very encouraging but when you think about it, it makes sense. Really good ideas take time to develop. It is much more likely that you will have a number of ideas which at first glance do not have much in common but will eventually evolve to one, as this video suggests.
These numerous ideas can lead you to the one you can start a business with.

And when you have found your startup idea?

When you think you have a business idea it is time to start talking to people about it. As David R. Prasser (Founder of StartUs) explained: “An idea alone is worth nothing. Talking to people about your idea is what makes it valuable. Why? If they like your idea they will go on and talk about it to their family, friends even potential customers.”
This means that you have to find out what other people think about your idea. Do they like it? Do they have advise for you? What would they change to make it better?
Whatever they will tell you (even if they say it is stupid) – do not take it personally. This is constructive feedback on your idea. Through conversations you will find out how valuable your idea is. Try to talk as much to people (and yes, even people you just met) to get as much response as possible. The more you communicate the more you will learn about your idea. Aspects you have not considered yourself yet will start to appear and will make you think about your idea more. And that is exactly what you want.
If you talk to experts in the industry you want to launch your business in you can consider it as a small (!) market research. Take their responses seriously and evaluate what this means for your idea. If they have some points to reconsider do so and refine your idea.

And now?

Talking to people made you realize there is a market for your idea and encouraged you? Great, you just made the first step! But you are still not sure if you should quit your daily job and work on your business model? Then you should probably start it as a side project, which many successful startups started as (for example Twitter). Paul Graham (Co-founder of Y Combinator) stated that you should get in a startup “probably when it [your side project] takes up more time than your actual job or other side projects.”

Over all the real question is “Is my idea profitable?”. Now this question can be answered by numbers and statistics. You will have to find out if there is a market for your idea and if yes, do people also need and want it? What are they looking for? In the end you want to sell them a product or service thus you want to make sure what is going on in your target group.

Keep your mind and eyes open, find out what troubles people and provide a solution for it.

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