The main reason why new startups fail is because they create a product that nobody wants, according to an investigation by CB Insights.
The millionaire idea
When we have an existing product or service, we tend to appreciate it because it makes life simpler and then that false conception arises that being a simple solution must also have been born in a simple way, which is often not the case.
It is frequent that in our mind the illusion is formed that we can manage to sell anything to any person, only needing some effort. However this is false, for every successful product there are dozens or even thousands of ideas that did not work in the end, as Thomas Alba Edison said:
«I have not failed, I only found 10,000 ways in which it did not work.»
Do not be afraid to share your business idea
Your business idea is worth nothing until you do not carry it out.
«People do not share their ideas because they think they will not run out of good ideas«- Jeff «Swampy» Marsh (creator of the Disney animated series Phineas & Ferb).
The mind is a muscle, the more you exercise, the more beneficial and efficient, that is why the more ideas we share, the more and more ideas will come to mind.
The first concept to break is about good and bad ideas, «There are no bad ideas«, just as there are no good ideas are just ideas and it is not possible to know if they will be good or bad until they have been carried out.
In addition, the fear that we get to steal the business idea has no basis, since it is impossible to steal an idea, remember that in this sense an idea is an abstract concept, so it is open to the interpretation of each person, that is why if we tell someone else our business idea probably does not understand one hundred percent, this can be advantageous because the moment you tell us your own interpretation will generate in us another new idea.
But if ideas can not be stolen or shared, how do we carry out our project?
The projects are really the abstraction of the ideas of all team members, that is why they do not usually end in the exact way in which we imagine (This is also the reason why visionaries do not really exist) .
What really matters
What really counts in a business is the effort (execution), the team and the market (the people with the problem). When we hear that some company, such as Google or Facebook, comes to buy a startup, what it really buys is one of these 3 things, the execution in the case of YouTube, the team in the case of Android or the market that is the case of WhatsApp, of course, can also be some variation of the 3, but never in itself the business idea.
The founder of Waze, Uri Levine insists that:
«We should not fall in love with our business idea, but with the problem»
Of course, we can focus on a single market and be aware of their needs and offer a solution to that problem that overwhelms them most, but what happens when we do not really want to solve that problem? Maybe because of lack of interest or because it is not our area of expertise. Then we can look for another problem that we can solve, which could also make our catalog of services grow.
In the same way the team can be in constant change as long as the vision and values of the company are maintained, this leaves us with the execution, which is maintained over time and is precisely the one that is used to value the company or even process patents.