By now, you’ve probably got a deep understanding of your idea, your business, and the industry that you’ll be operating in.

But how do you know you’re right about all this?

Let’s face it. All that you’ve cooked up so far is just a broth of hypothesis flavoured with a dash of assumptions. With just hypotheses and assumptions, it’s very difficult to predict if you’re right about any of it.
The only way to know if you’re on the right path is to prove it or validate it. Like a mad scientist, you must do everything possible to confirm that your idea is the correct one. How do you do that? Well, you need what’s called a proof of concept .
Ideally, you should do this even before you start building anything. Why? Well, what if your assumptions turn out to be false and nobody actually needs your product? What if the need for the solution you plan provide doesn’t even exist?
That’s a dreadful situation for any entrepreneur to find themselves in. And more often than not, entrepreneurs do find themselves in this situation – having a warehouse full of products that nobody wants to buy.
This happens because a lot of aspiring entrepreneurs get deeply attached to their ideas. They find it very difficult to get out of the fantasy that they have created in their head and face reality.
Ideally, as an entrepreneur, you need to go outside and face the facts as soon as possible. You should face reality today – not tomorrow or next year. If you’ve invested a lot of time, effort and money on building the wrong things for the wrong people, it’s better you find out before you go any deeper.
Lucky for you, I have a way through which you can validate your idea before you spend a single rupee on its development. Here you need to understand that validation is not a guarantee of success. It only gives you enough assurance that there is , in fact, a need out there in the market for your product. But validation definitely saves you a lot of time, effort, and money, and increases your chances of success.
So let me walk you through the steps on how you can validate your idea.

Step #1: Write down the concept

Believe it or not, just writing down your concept can help you get a lot of clarity about your idea. Now when I say write down, I don’t mean that you should go ahead and create a full-blown business plan.
You first need to understand who your customers are. Describe them in as much detail as possible with all their demographic data like age, gender, profession, education, marital status, etc. Then, write down what you think are their hopes and dreams, challenges, and motivations.
Next, describe what problems your idea will solve. By writing down these problems, you can check whether customers also consider them to be problems and whether those problems are worth solving.
After that, write about your solution and how it solves the problem. Again, don’t talk about the features of your product; talk about the benefits . How your solution is going to change your prospect’s life for the better?
Don’t worry too much about how long or short all of these answers are. Whatever information you have, just write it all down.

Step #2: Craft an elevator pitch

In today’s age, attention is one of the most valuable commodities in the world. And it’s scarce. Everyone is busy and may not have time to give you their undivided attention. But that’s mainly because they don’t know what they’re getting from you.
People have less time to focus on things that don’t impact them. You have to capture their attention quickly and get their “yes” within a minute or two that they give you. That’s why you need an elevator pitch.
An elevator pitch is a sales pitch you can make before the elevator reaches the destination floor.
It could be something like this:
Hey [First Name]!
I’m building a product that will solve this problem. [Here, you talk about what it does and expand on its features, focused on its benefits.] Would you be interested in learning more about this and help me create something that’s best for you?
It’s not perfect. But that doesn’t matter. You can refine it as you go and tweak it over time as you learn more about what your audience wants.

Step #3: Test the hypothesis for the problem

An idea is nothing but a problem waiting to be solved. Without a problem, there is no need, and without a need, there’s no place for your idea. So it is crucial that you first validate that the problem actually exists in the real world and that there are enough people facing the problem.
For this, you need to go out there and start talking to your prospects.
At this stage, all you want is to find out if your hypothetical solution solves an actual problem – whether your prospects also recognize the problem and want a solution.
Don’t even talk about your solution here. Just listen to people explaining their problems, and how they’ve been tackling them so far. You will also understand whether the target customer segment that you had identified as the right one is in fact correct. Or do you need to redefine your audience?
What you’re looking for is a signal as to whether enough people in your segment face the problem or not.
You can probably skip this step if the problems your audience is facing and you are trying to address are things like making more money, getting fit, finding partners, fixing communication problems, etc. These problems are generic. In such cases, we directly go to step #4 where we try to find out whether your solution and value proposition actually resonates with your target audience to the point where they’re ready to pay for it.

Step #4 Test the hypothesis for the solution

Hopefully, by now you would’ve confirmed that the problem is real, and your audience is waiting for it to be solved. But now, you also need to test if the solution you’re proposing is actually the one that customers would love to use to solve their problem.
You don’t have to sell your solution at this point. During the validation process, don’t try to convince them about why they should use your solution. You can describe your solution and its value proposition. You can also try to tell your audience how your solution is better than existing ones. Then try to gauge what it would take for them to take the leap and opt for your solution. You can also use this opportunity to test out different pricing options.
The best way to do all this testing is by using questionnaires.
Remember, the most powerful question you can ask is “Why?” This question alone will allow you to go deeper into the responses of your prospects. Also, make sure you conduct enough in-depth interviews to get an accurate sense. It’s also a good idea to record your conversations with your prospects – with their permission, of course.

Step #5 Talk to the right people

So how do you find these people?
All your analysis will go out of the window if you don’t talk to the right people. You have to talk to your target audience to understand how they feel about their problem and your solution.
The best way to ask these questions is in a face-to-face interview. This way, you’ll be able to gauge a lot more about your respondents. We both know how difficult it is to speak to so many people in person but try. And after a point, there are a few other things you can try to connect with your target audience.

Surveys

One of the easiest ways to get more responses is through surveys . You can use the same questionnaire in the surveys too. In fact, with surveys you can probe further and remove any bias in the responses. It’s always recommended that you add a few generic questions such as what your respondents do, or their age, etc. in the survey to gauge the quality of the responses.
On the other hand, completely anonymous surveys put participants at ease and allow them to share their thoughts freely, which can give you great insights. The easiest way to conduct a survey is using Google Forms or a freemium solution like TypeForm.

Then there are Industry Experts

Industry experts are called experts for a reason. They have insights about the industry that probably no one else has. If nothing else, they will shorten your learning curve by quite a lot.
So, if you have any contacts who have been in the industry for a while, reach out to them. This is easier said than done, but it’s definitely worth the effort. It’s best that you talk to industry experts in person and make the most of your time and theirs.

Which brings us to Mentors

The role of mentors is valuable at all stages of a business but is very crucial at this stage. Mentors can not only help you fine-tune and refine your idea but also put you in touch with all the right people so that you can execute your idea in the right way.
When you’re talking to mentors, expect roles to be reversed. They’re quite likely to ask you some tough questions. If you don’t know the answers, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and come back when you have those answers.

Community Meetups are also a huge help

You can easily find communities or chambers specific to your industry. Most such communities conduct meetups where members network and discuss issues and topics related to that industry. Make sure you join such communities and attend events where you can interact with both peers and prospects. You can check out Facebook and LinkedIn and discover communities that can be part of. And if this community isn’t already holding meetups, then you can score extra brownie points for volunteering to start organizing such events.

Strangers – yes, they can help too

Walking up to a stranger and asking their opinion about your solution can be terrifying. What can be more terrifying is the brutality with which they might give their opinions – and that’s a good thing.
When you actually start selling, you’ll be selling to strangers, you should want to know what they feel about your solution. But make sure that you’re polite when you approach strangers and respect their space and privacy. If they refuse to participate, respectfully back off. A good place to do this would be at coffee shops since it’s a much more relaxed environment.

Step #6 The Waiting List

This step is optional but definitely adds a lot of value if you see it through. Set up a simple landing page describing your solution, using the top 3 to 5 words or phrases used by the audience you identified during the interview stage.
Summarize the problem, along with your solution, and tell them why your solution might be the best one out there. Drive traffic to the landing page using ads or even organically and prompt your audience to join a waiting list. Even better would be for you to give them an option to pre-order your solution at a heavily discounted price.
Doing this will give you a list of prospects who might be willing to purchase your solution when you actually launch it, and if everything goes well, people might even pre-order. What better way to launch your solution than to a group of people who are waiting to buy it and try it?
By following these 6 steps, you should be able to get enough feedback on whether or not your idea is worth developing further.
Of course, you might also be wondering what would happen if somebody stole your idea during this exercise.
Don’t worry, ideas are a dime a dozen. It’s the execution that matters, and you already have a head start on this. Trust me, people have way less time, skill sets and patience than you think they do.
Then there’s the flip side. What happens if you do all this and discover that your idea is not good enough. If you ask me, that’s a great thing! It’s better to find this out now instead of pouring in hours of hard work, effort, and money into something that isn’t viable. Besides, you can also pivot from your idea and start all over again or approach it from a new angle.
So in summary, in order to validate your idea you need to:
1. Describe the concept,
2. Create an elevator pitch,
3. Test the hypothesis for the problem,
4. Test the hypothesis for the solution,
5. Talk to the right people, and
6. And create a waiting list
Once you’ve done that and have enough assurance that it’s feasible enough to move forward, you can now go and build your minimum viable product – the MVP. More about that in the next article.

What is the difference between website designing and website development?

What is web design?

In essence, web design refers to both the aesthetics and usability of a website. Web designers use various design programs (such as Adobe Photoshop) to create the layout and other visual elements of the website.

What is web development

On the other hand, web developers design a website and then actually create a functioning website from it. Web developers use HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP and other programming languages to implement design files.

What is difference between web design and web development

• All in all, web design and web development are two completely different jobs that are crucial to having an aesthetically pleasing and functional website.
• The web designer takes care of everything cosmetic, while a web developer ensures that buttons, forms, navigation bars, links, and videos work on the site.
• Neither is more important than the other since you need both web design and web development to make your website come to life.

What Tools Do Web Designers And Web Developers Use?

Web developers work with programming languages like HTML, CSS, and Javascript to create websites and web applications. They will also most likely utilise other languages to set up email services, user authentication, databases, and other technical aspects of websites. To do this, developers use software like text editors, command line interface, and version control to build the technical information (the code) that will present the data.

Web designers are not primarily responsible for knowing how the code works— but making sure it’s aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly for website visitors. They will utilise graphics design software—including products like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Inkscape (an excellent alternative to Photoshop), and GIMP. Ultimately, they will design the layout of the website through constructing prototypes and wireframes. Designers control the flow of information and can even be responsible for website analytics.

The Importance of Website Design and Web Development Services for a Company

• If you really want to generate more business with a quality website. This may be the first line of communication between you and potential guests or visitors. The great advantage of website development company and website design company is that the website will be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and can be viewed from anywhere in the world. Therefore anyone can collect suitable information from the website at any time.
• In today’s business environment and to beat the competition large or small companies definitely need to develop a good website. Many business owners use the excuse that their business is “word-of-mouth” and they do not need a website. But a great way to reinforce the personal recommendations of other clients is through professional website development.
• Web development services help your company to increase product knowledge, maintain communication between you and potential clients, sell your products or services, generate leads for the business, and increase the popularity of your company and much more.

Conclusion

After the in-depth elaboration of the importance of a website, certain aspects come out clear. The first one is that business enterprises should endeavour to develop and design a custom website. Secondly, it is crucial to put the best foot forward. So it is anticipated that the website or blog meets and surpasses the guidelines.
Having said this, it is up to the webmaster to make that broad move and develop a website.

For any type of technical Services, call us 8837546940

Now that you’ve figured out your million-dollar startup idea, it’s time to dive deep into the concept a little more.

Before you actually get your startup going, it’s crucial that you get as much clarity as possible about the business and the market you’ll be operating in.

Having the right kind of business operating in the right market is crucial to increasing your chances of being successful in your venture.

Let’s try to understand all the different aspects of a business and its market.

What kind of business will it be?

 Product or Service?

The classic dilemma for any entrepreneur is whether to create a service or a product. You may have got some clarity in terms of the type of business you want to build during the ideation phase. But there might be instances where you are caught in the middle, not sure which way to go.

With a service-based business, you trade your skills and most importantly your time in exchange for money. With a product-based business, you sell products for people to consume.

Both types of businesses can lead you to success. There are thousands of hugely successful startups, both service-based and product-based. However, you need to know one crucial difference between service-based startups and product-based startups – Scaling.

It’s much harder to scale a services-based business because the amount of money you can make is proportionate to the number of hours you – or your staff – can work, and there are only 24 hours in a day. As the number of staff increases, so will your expenses, leaving very little for you to reinvest in growing your business.

It’s far easier to scale a product-based startup. In fact, for a product-based startup, the more you scale, the unit economics only become better. What I want to emphasize here is that product-based operations can be easily scaled to a certain extent without the need for additional investment…until of course you’re looking at achieving massive scale. And for a startup, scaling up is everything.

Another important thing you need to understand about a services-based startup is the low set-up costs and low barriers to enter the market. This makes it less risky in that you’re investing less in terms of money. This is precisely why a lot of first-time entrepreneurs are drawn towards setting up a services-based business rather than a product-based one.

On the other hand, a product-based startup requires a significant upfront investment, and it may be some time before you see any return on the investment at all, especially if you have jumped in blindly with no clear idea of the demand for the product.

So how do we solve this problem? A simple way to fix this is to stop looking at them as two independent options. Instead, you can start with one and then transition to the other.

That’s right. You can start off as a services-based startup with a low investment, validate the market with little risk and slowly transition into a product-based startup with a good product-market fit. Predictable revenues will actually allow you to scale much more rapidly.

Basically, what you’re doing is productizing your services.

The best example of this is Ola. When they started out, you could book your cab only through their call center. This was much easier for Ola than having to invest millions of dollars into developing the product that they have today. But eventually, after understanding the market’s needs and pain points, they smoothly transitioned into a product company, which allowed them to scale rapidly and capture significant market share.

You could do the same. Again, this is not the only way to go about it, but it’s a lot less risky than jumping in product-first.

Once you have that figured out, you can move on to the next question of whether to sell to a lot of people at a low cost or to fewer people at a high cost; in other words: B2C versus B2B.

So, do you sell to a consumer or to a business?

Imagine you want to buy a mobile phone for your personal use. How would you decide which one to go with? Who would you consult about these decisions? How will you evaluate whether your purchase is good or bad? How long will you take to make a decision?

Now, put yourself in the shoes of a high-level executive in a multinational company who is authorized to purchase 2 million dollars’ worth of software. Again, ask yourself the same questions. Despite the questions being the same, your answers will vary considerably. That is probably the most significant difference between opting for B2C or B2B.

 Put yourself in the shoes of your prospects and think how you would sell to them. I’m sure your approach will be very different for each option. These differences stem from the change in customer behaviour.

B2C or B2B, at the end of the day, all businesses are about human interactions and relationships, but there are three critical differences between a startup that caters to consumers and a startup that caters to businesses.

1. Return on Investment (ROI),
2. Client Relationships, and
3. The Decision-Making Process.

First: let’s look at return on investment

Consumers and businesses look at the return on investment very differently. The return on investment for most consumer goods is intangible and quite hard to quantify. Imagine you bought a car: how would you go about figuring out the return on investment for that? But that is exactly the question that will help you understand consumer behavior and which way to go with

your business.

Consumers love novelty. They often buy things based on emotion and then rationalize the purchase with logic. Human beings are social animals and we do everything we can to fit into the tribe. The easiest way to do this is to conform to what others around us are doing. The fear of missing out is powerful, especially when it comes to entertainment, fashion trends, and new

technology.

We do this because change involves a cost. Whenever you challenge the status quo, you incur a cost in the form of time, effort, or money, and that’s what it is – a cost and not an investment.

And subconsciously, we go to any length to avoid it.

On the other hand, a B2B transaction is inherently an investment. An investment with the expectation that it will increase profitability, reduce costs, improve productivity and efficiency, and most importantly, sales.

Unlike individual consumers, B2B customers never buy things to look good, for fun, or for the user experience. The expectation of a return on investment from the purchase is inherent. There has to be one.

A new software has to be faster and more reliable; the marketing automation solution has to get them more business, and a new HR tool must help make employees happier and more productive.

What consumers call novelty, businesses call risk.

What companies are looking for is a way to differentiate and stand out from the crowd.

Organizations want to gain an edge over their competitors by doing something better than them.

For this, they actively look out for products or services that will make them faster, more efficient and most importantly, better than the competition.

You first have to understand and decide where your product or your offering falls in this spectrum.

Next, look at consumer relationship

B2C markets are usually big. Customers keep changing over a period of time. Customer retention and loyalty is a big issue for B2C startups. Although instinctively, most consumer-focused startups try to limit the churn, they know that they can never fix it completely, and they’re are with it.

On the other hand, B2B markets tend to be smaller and more focused. For you to thrive as a B2B startup, you need to invest in building deep relationships with a small number of companies. These relationships are crucial for you to score long-term agreements or even keep existing agreements. This is also one of the reasons why B2B companies tend to lean

towards the customized service side of the business.

Three: What’s your decision-making process?

The decision-making process for consumer products varies quite a bit. For a low-priced item, the decision-making process is rather intuitive and instantaneous. For a high-priced item, B2C customers might consult family, friends and their social network, but it rarely gets more complicated than that.

For a B2C startup, the customer and the consumer are the same people. This makes it easier for these startups to target these customers effectively and for that, they have consistent marketing communication.

On the other hand, for a B2B purchase, the approval or pre-authorization of multiple stakeholders is the norm. In fact, the end user may or may not even participate in the decision.

This is why the sales cycle can be dramatically longer in a B2B business. This lengthy sales cycle can also disrupt your daily operations to a large extent. So it becomes important to create communication that connects and engages all these stakeholders.

These are all the things you have to consider before deciding whether to go B2C or B2B.

Would you go after a market which is very big but won’t pay much, is emotionally driven, difficult to penetrate but easier to convince?

Or would you go after a very narrow market, which wouldn’t mind paying a lot, but with an extremely long sales cycle.

That’s what you need to think about.

Business Model or Revenue Model

Once you’ve decided on the nature of your business and who your typical audience is, it is time to figure out what is the best way to monetize your audience.

You have to get them to pay for your offering for you to continue servicing them and the rest of the market. This is your business or revenue model. You’d build your business depending on how you want to monetize your audience.

Here are a few ways you can monetize your audience:

One is the Transactional Model – Physical Products, digital Products, or the service Model

When I hear aspiring entrepreneurs say they want to start their own business, they are usually talking about creating and selling their own products or services. It doesn’t surprise me that most entrepreneurs lean towards this business model. Although it’s a great model, it’s not the only model out there.

This model is a broad representation of business models and can have multiple business models within it. Its biggest advantage is probably the flexibility it offers. Let me elaborate: You can choose whether to make a physical product or a digital product or even a service for that matter. Then you can promote it through the marketing channels of your choice and distribute it the way you see fit. Your customers are directly transacting with you for your offering.

Two: a subscription-Based Model

A spin-off of the transactional model is the subscription-based model. This is where your audience is again transacting with you directly but also frequently over a particular period.

Instead of offering your product as a one-time purchase, startups using this model can enjoy recurring revenue in the form of monthly or even weekly payments. Thanks to this, compared to other business models, customer acquisition and retention becomes easier and cheaper.

Instead of asking for a significant one-time payment, this model allows you to ask your customers to make a purchase decision at a low upfront cost. As you can imagine, most people might be comfortable with investing 500 rupees a month than shelling out 5,000 rupees at one shot.

This model is quite popular in industries like fashion, media, and daily consumables.

Three: The Advertising Model

This model can be extremely effective, especially considering the advent of ad networks. At the heart of this model is the idea of providing a free product or service and relying on ad revenue paid by companies trying to reach your audience through your asset.

But to be successful and profitable with this business model, you need to be operating at a large scale.

The bottom line here is the more people you can reach, the higher your profits will be. A prime example of this model is YourStory itself. The platform is entirely free to use, and we monetize our audience reach with ads.

Four: The Marketplace Model

This model revolves around providing a platform where buyers and sellers can meet and carry out transactions. On one hand, you provide sellers with what they need: an audience, logistics and a whole lot more. On the other hand, you give buyers a secure and convenient way of transacting with these sellers.

This model would work brilliantly in disorganized industries waiting to be organized by a safe and convenient platform. Revenue is usually generated by applying a small fee on the transaction and other premium services. Like the ad-based model, you should be operating at a certain scale for this to be profitable.

Five: The Rental Model

This is a rather new model where you own assets that you allow access to at a fraction of what it would otherwise cost your consumers. With consumers increasingly preferring access over ownership, this model seems to solve that problem effectively.

The biggest drawback with this model is the huge upfront costs needed to buy the assets. You also need to consider assets that are not very difficult to maintain, or maintenance will become an added burden.

All these business models are very broad and don’t necessarily cover all the business models out there. In fact, new business models crop up all the time, very often based on the need of the customer. You can also mix different business models to create your own model. So go ahead and experiment and figure out the best way to monetize your audience.

Now while you’re doing that, you should also understand how big your market is and how fast it’s growing.

Size & growth of the market

It’s very important that you determine the market size of the industry you’re trying to get into. This will tell you whether this industry is big enough to enter, and whether you can extract enough profits if you can capture a large share of that market.

If the market is not big enough, then it doesn’t make sense for you to enter it at all. You wouldn’t want to invest in an industry that will give you only an incremental return after years of hard work. Instead, you should aim for an industry that is big enough for your investment to grow exponentially. For this, you can follow these 4 simple steps.

One: Understand the size of the market

To understand the size of the market, you need to zero in on your exact customer segment and understand it in-and-out. Most probably, you already figured out some part of this at the idea generation stage. Now you need to determine the exact size of the market.

This can be tricky and the only way to do this is with research. With simple products, this assessment becomes much easier than with complicated products. For example, if your product is targeted at working women, you will need to figure out how many working women are there in the location you are targeting.

 Two: Understand the value of the market

 The next step is to understand how much each customer in your audience is willing to pay for your offering. If you already have competitors, this should be easy to find out. But if you don’t have competitors, then you need to either look for similar products or understand the value of your offering.

The number of people (that is, the size of the market) and the amount they are willing to pay will give you the value of the market. Going back to the example of working women, let’s assume that there are about 1 crore working women and each one of them can afford about 100 rupees then the value of your market is 1 crore multiplied by 100 rupees which is 100 crores. This 100 crores denotes your total addressable market.

Three: Understand the serviceable market

Now, when you’re starting off, there is almost always some competition. And you can expect the entire market to be yours if no competitor already dominates the market.

But aiming for 1-5% of the total addressable market, which is your serviceable market, is considered a reasonable target.

Now, the serviceable market shows how big the market for your business is. Going by our previous example of the 100 crore working women market, 5% of it which is 5 crores would be your serviceable market. It also signifies how valuable your startup can be. How big your pie is going to be is what investors find most attractive.

Four: Determine the growth rate of the market

Having a big market is not enough; it also needs to be a growing market. A high-growth industry means that not only is there great demand but also a lot of room to scale.

You don’t want to get into a stagnant industry. Very often, stagnant industries don’t have a lot of players – that’s something you should look out for.

The best way to determine this is to see how your potential competitors are growing year on year. If you are entering a market with enough research done, you will know the compounded annual growth rate or CAGR for that industry.

All these numbers will give you a clear understanding of the size of the industry and how lucrative it is. It’s now time to size up your competition and figure out whether it’s a battle worth fighting.

Competitor Analysis

When it comes to competitor analysis, pick your battles wisely. This dramatically increases your chances of not just survival but also success. You don’t want to enter a battlefield full of heavyweights.

Large corporations with large budgets can easily squash your efforts before you even get started. You should be looking for the low-hanging fruit, but don’t let a little competition bog you down.

It’s great to have competition. The first one through the door always gets shot, and your competitors would have led the way for you. Enjoy the second-mover advantage.

Analyzing your competition also helps you understand all the gaps in the way they are serving the audience, and if your offering can fill the gap, that would be ideal.

You need to be methodical with your approach and logical with your decisions. That’s why I’ve created a competitor analysis canvas which will give you an extremely good view of your entire industry.

You can choose what data points you want to populate, but there are plenty of options for you to choose from. Check the downloads sections for a template for competitor analysis and perform it for the industry you are planning to enter.

To summarize, we learnt what kind of business you can start, whether to sell to consumers or companies, the different business models you can have, how to understand the size of your market and how to perform competitor analysis.

This is the module you must have been waiting for this because like most aspiring entrepreneurs you too must be dealing with the classic question:

“ How do I come up with the right startup idea?”

It’s a simple enough question, but also the most difficult one to answer.

Ideation is fun and free. Anyone can come up with ideas. The difficult part is coming up with the right startup idea. But when you do come up with the right startup idea, you improve your odds of successful execution.

I have been asked this question many times. You might have also heard plenty of simple answers like “convert your passion into a hobby”, “look for a large underserved market”, “pick an industry which is trending”. Unfortunately, these approaches aren’t really helpful, nor are they universally applicable.

After studying thousands of startups, talking to their founders, recording their stories, I began to notice a pattern about how entrepreneurs come up with ideas for their startups.

I was able to broadly categorise these into three buckets:

• The Lightning Strike
• The Right Place at the Right Time
• The Brainstorm

How many times have you come up with brilliant ideas when you least expected it? Like you were struck by a bolt of lightning. It can happen when you’re in the shower, driving your car, talking with friends, or just mindlessly going through the Instagram feed. You start connecting the dots in a new way and have an epiphany. This sudden insight seems surprising at first. And then it becomes exciting when the value of this new idea seems obvious to a point where you wonder why nobody else has thought of it before.

Naturally, you go online, research a little bit only to find out that someone did actually think of it before you did. Still, it is very often possible to use this idea and execute it better than people who are already in the market. You might even find a new angle to the whole idea and create a very different solution. That’s great, isn’t it? Finding a million-dollar idea.

Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen to everyone. If it’s happened to you, consider yourself lucky.

The second way to get a great idea is to be in the right place at the right time and spot an opportunity. Imagine this scenario: you’ve spent the last 7 years building a custom software for hospitals. You’ve noticed some obvious gaps in the product or issues with how your company is selling it. You point out these issues to your boss and how improving these can make this product better. But the company doesn’t take any action to address these issues, because they have other priorities.

And right there, you have a business opportunity.

Let’s look at another scenario. Maybe your company outsources some work to vendors and pays them a big amount for this. But nobody is satisfied with the quality of work they do. You know there’s a better way to execute this process and at a lesser cost.

Here’s one more. Maybe your company shelved an amazing product or feature purely because of political and organizational reasons.

Or, you might have come across a business opportunity while working abroad, which you feelmight work very well here in India too.

These are all the kind of opportunities where you feel you can deliver a better solution. That’s when you should start working on a solution – on your own time, of course. You need to get specific information, bounce your ideas with trusted co-workers and industry contacts and try to determine the feasibility of solving the problem.The good thing is that you already know the problem and the challenges and are therefore well-positioned or networked in that particular space. So your chances of successfully executing your idea increases manifold.

Such opportunities don’t arise for everyone. So if you get such an opportunity, go out there and make something of it.

Both these methods rely on some amount of luck. And luck is not something you can control.

This is exactly why I zeroed in on a third way of coming up with new ideas. I call this the Brainstorm Matrix. This framework gives you all the triggers to connect the dots and come up with brand new ideas. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Make a list of audience segments

Step 2: Make a list of problems that the audience is facing

Step 3: Match it up with a couple of business model

Step 4: Evaluate these models and narrow it down to a single idea

So shall we go create your own brainstorming matrix?

First: Make a list of audience segments

Create a spreadsheet and type out a list of 15-20 different customer segments in the first column. You don’t have to get too specific about this. Let it just be a general representation of audience segments. These are easier to conceptualize so they’re more useful and helpful for generating ideas.

You can create audience segments like college students, stay-at-home moms, MNC professionals, HR professionals, retired people, agencies, manufacturing companies, first-time parents – whatever you can think of. Don’t think too much or too deeply about this. Just go ahead and list out everything that comes into your mind.

You can also begin by picturing yourself as your target audience. Identify problems and issues that you yourself might be facing, for which you want solutions. You can start with issues related to your personal interests, hobbies, experience, or professional network, but don’t limit yourself to these.

If you’re having trouble coming up with more ideas, you can merge two audiences to make a new audience. For example: stay-at-home moms who are first-time parents. You can dwell deeper into specific categories too, or you could add an extra layer with geography and start with your own city. Before moving on, make sure that you have one clearly defined audience segment.

Next: Make a list of problems that this audience is facing

In the second column, put down all the problems your audience segment is facing. If you are part of this audience segment, it really helps in listing out the pain points. When you’re doing this, don’t worry if you don’t come up with well-defined problems. This is just to get the ball rolling.

Your market represents an audience segment with an unmet need or an unsolved problem. What are their hopes and dreams, their priorities, all the challenges they are facing, how are they spending or wasting their time and money? Make sure you check out discussion forums where they participate. Understand what they are complaining about. Research online for companies who are already offering them a solution.

List it all down. Keep adding problems to the list as and when you think of them.

After this, Match up the problems with business model(s)

Broadly speaking, there are only a few business models out there. You can come up with a brand-new business model, but it’s fine if you don’t. You can simply start playing around with existing business models.

Here are a few you can try

• Services
• Physical Products
• Digital Products
• Subscriptions
• Marketplace or Aggregator
• Crowdsourcing, and of course,
• A New Biz Model

List out all these business models in separate columns at the top of your sheet.

Your spreadsheet is now a matrix with customer and audience segments along with their problems down one side and business models across the top. Each cell where the two lists overlap is a place to brainstorm ideas. Go through each cell in this grid. You’ll probably dismiss many of the boxes within just a few seconds, but it is worth giving them some consideration. Who knows? You might come up with an idea you least expected.

The easiest way to do this is to go column by column. Pick a business or pricing model, search for a few existing businesses that use it, and spend a few minutes reading about them to get your head into that space. Then, check it against each potential customer or audience group.

Usually, the first column will take the most time because you are learning about each of the customer types as you go. It gets faster after that. Every time you come up with a solution worth trying out, highlight it as being viable.

The goal is to come up with at least 5-6 solid ideas. You then create another tab in the spreadsheet and list all your ideas there. Next to the ideas, write down the ideas, what the goal is, the audiences and business models for each one. This is not set in stone, but it is good to have a base from where you can move forward.

Step 4: Evaluate your shortlist and zero in on a single idea

Evaluate your list of 6+ ideas against criteria that will help you narrow down the list to the most promising 3.

You should evaluate your ideas in terms of these factors:

1. Competitiveness : Check how competitive the field is, but don’t get too deterred by the competition. If there are competitors, it usually means that there is a market for that product or service.
2. Your skillset & interests : Do you have the right skillsets to get into this industry? Do you have any experience in the industry or an industry similar to this one? Do you have the right connections that can help you navigate this sector?
3. Your goals : Will this industry help you in achieving your goals? Are you comfortable with the risk of investing money, time and effort in this industry?
4. Market opportunity : How big is the market, not just in terms of people but also in terms of how much each person in that market is willing to pay for your offering?

You probably won’t have time to do a deep-dive into all your ideas, so getting this narrowed down is both a science and an art. What does your gut tell you? What would be fun? Where are you most comfortable and confident? Let the answers to such questions guide you in your selection.

To make it easier, you can quantify it too. To quantify, add a column to the Ideas tab, for each of the criteria. Then, score your ideas from 1-5, with 5 being the best.

Don’t worry too much about whether something scores a 3 or a 4. Just keep going with your gut or do a few minutes of online research. Keep moving forward, don’t get stuck here.

When you’re done, add up the score and ideally, the higher the score, the more interesting the idea is.

Once you are done with this, run them by a couple of trusted friends to get an unbiased opinion and narrow them down to the three that seem most promising.

Many entrepreneurs think that they must come up with a business idea that no one has thought of before. But this is a misconception, because if the idea has any merit to it, someone would have definitely thought about it. See how you can add your insight and give it an interesting twist.

Don’t get too carried away by words like “innovation” and “disruption”. While going through this exercise, you may have realized that there are some industry segments which can lead to exponential results with just an incremental change.

Of course, being a first-mover is a big advantage. But being the first to market can also mean being the first to fail. And here’s the thing: you don’t necessarily need to be the first to market to succeed. Often, the second mover has a big advantage. The second to market can avoid the mistakes their predecessors made; you can improve in areas where they fell short. You can also

use all the consumer and market research that’s already been done.

And the best part is, it’s now easy to convince the investors and get funding for a proven market.

But merely copying a pre-existing product isn’t going to be enough. You must fill in the gaps and provide value and novelty beyond what already exists. You have to truly fix a problem that the existing product or service did not solve.

Let’s look at an example. We all used Gmail, right? But when it came out, there was already Hotmail, AOL, Yahoo … so many other free email services. But with its clean interface and better SPAM filters, Gmail became the winner, beating everyone out there.

One more: consider the case of the iPhone and iPod.

The iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player in the market. The iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone. There were many other brands like Sony, and there were mobile phones from Nokia, Blackberry, Samsung… But none of them were able to stop Apple. With their sleek, minimalist product design, features, and superior software, iPods and iPhones became super successes and helped Apple’s fortunes skyrocket and become the most valuable company out there.

That’s all we have. Now it’s your turn to take some time to work on this and brainstorm a few ideas using the template we discussed.

Before you actually get your startup going, it’s crucial that you get as much clarity as possible about the business and markets you’ll be operating in.

Having the ​right​ kind of business operating in the ​right​ market is crucial to increasing your chances of being successful in your venture. (more…)

The time has finally come. You’ve poured your blood, sweat, and tears into your most recent content piece, and it’s ready to be packaged up and sent to the client to be pushed live. After a few final checks and only…

The time has finally come. You’ve poured your blood, sweat, and tears into your most recent content piece, and it’s ready to be packaged up and sent to the client to be pushed live. After a few final checks and only…