5 Lessons Learned from Brainstorming 200 New Business Ideas

[acco340]

I came across Tyler's Ideas Meat Grinder Post in November 2020, where he mentions:

First of all you should be coming up with at least five possible business ideas every day...You should be constantly thinking this way.It should annoy people who spend a lot of time around you...If you’re not doing that, you’re probably not going to be an entrepreneur.

I decided to put Tyler's theory to test.

Every weekday since, I took some time to sit down and write down 5 business ideas, no matter how terrible, for a month and a half. Here are some lessons I learned along the way:

Disclaimer: this is a post about lessons I learned from my practice of daily business idea generation, I am not a successful starter and I do not claim to be an expert at coming up with new business ideas. Some ideas I came up with are hilariously bad (see ChewMote: the dog proof remote cover).

Start With Your Customers​

When I first started the practice I used Tyler's list of meat grinder questions to evaluate business ideas:

1. Problem
2. Idea
3. Can I make this?
4. Are people currently spending money on it?
5. How will I get the first 25/250 customers?
6. Will it be sustainable?
7. Am I the person to build this business?

It soon became clear that as a software developer, question 5 is the real hurdle for my ideas.

It turns out there are only 10 ways to rearrange Hacker News, Product Hunt, SEO, and Subreddits without repeating myself.

Since the goal is to create a Micro SaaS, working on a product without a 250 customer market is almost never an issue. Let's say I have a theoretical trail condition app MudGuard, its main feature is a list of popular trails and whether they are too muddy or icy to run on. The real challenge with MudGuard is how to reach those Denver trail runners who cares if the trails are too muddy, and it is not going to be via Hacker News, Product Hunt, SEO or /r/trailrunning.

Lesson 1: start with a customer base you know and have some access to, especially if you want to bootstrap a SaaS.

Scratch Your Own Itch​

Remember the MudGuard app I mentioned earlier? It turns out the Denver Trail Runners Facebook group is extremely active and has 5.3k members, and the Golden Trail Runners Meetup group has 1.1k members. There are also a number of specialty running shoe stores near by that regularly schedule trail runs I can market the app at.

I know these things because I'm a trail runner in Denver and I often worry about which trails are dry during the winter months.

"Scratch your own itch" is so often recommended as an idea generation tool that it's a cliche at this point. But when you are trying to come up with X ideas per day, it's an extremely powerful tool because it answers so many other questions at once:

1. Since it is an itch for you, there's at least person who will want to pay for it. I like ideas that I know I will pay $5 for on the spot if a solution exists.
2. The itch is usually a problem that you share with some other subset of people, and often times it's a group that you have free marketing channel access to. It's much easier for me to do customer validation on the hypothetical trail running app than a scuba diving app as a non-swimmer.
3. I am more often than not the right person to build an app that solves my own problems. Scratching your own itch and an itch of those people who you share a trait with is intrinsically rewarding.

Lesson 2: If the problem is your own itch, then you are often already half the way to a decent idea.

Welcome Competitors​

Another problem arises, I am not sure I would pay for MudGuard, and definitely not in monthly subscription fees.

Maybe I am just a cheapskate, or maybe that's the problem of coming up with 'novel ideas'. You never know if anyone will pay for them.

Or will they? It turns out there are competitors for MudGuard out there. For example, TrailFork is a great site and app that shows trail condition for lots of popular trails near me and has a paid version of the app. Now that we know there are paying customers for our idea, we know we are no longer dealing with a new market and all the hassle that entails. We now know our itch is itchy enough to be a paying pain point for others, making it much more promising.

Fear of competitors is a good example of a major issue of mine when I first started writing down ideas. The logical side of me knew the correct answer is to embrace competitors, I can hear the little voice inside of my head saying

"Of course you should welcome competitors, that means the market is validated"

But my gut hated the idea of competitors, there's something about the emotional comfort of a pristine pasture market all to myself that I couldn't shake off.

It took a few weeks and many ideas to embrace competitors both logically and emotionally, but eventually my did learn that no competitors means there are likely no paying customers either.

Lesson 3: With practice your gut will like competitors as much as your head does.

Now that even I wouldn't pay monthly for MudGuard, what about...

Go Where the Money Is​

Arvid Kahl mentioned the follow criteria for finding critical problems that people will pay for (in his great bootstrap guide Zero To Sold):

• If the solution saves them time
• If the solution saves them money
• If the solution makes them money

Notice how two of the three criteria contain the word money (and remember the saying 'time is money'). There are many important services in my daily life that I do not pay for, like a good dog petting in the morning, but a business will do far better trying to lower my rent than make my dog petting more efficient.

Money changing hands isn't just about sales and paying taxes. All things being equal, a tool that automatically dials sales calls leading to 2% efficacy gain is easier to sell than one that reminds you to call your mother and does the dialing automatically. The key is to be an integral part of the money making / money spending workflow.

Lesson 4: When in doubt, go to where money is being made or spent.

And that leads me to the final lesson....

You Get Better At It​

Around mid-January 2021 I stopped generating 5 new ideas a day and toned it down to 1 idea per day. This is both so I can spend more time doing in-depth customer / competitor research and because I started to notice a change in my day to day routine. I had started to come up with business ideas automatically throughout the day, and simultaneously run a quick filter for the various evaluation question almost subconsciously. While I still had to force myself to sit down and fill out all 5, I would often have a few ideas already banked throughout the day.

Lesson 5: You can get better at creating new ideas if you practice.

I wish I can travel back in time a few years and tell my younger self to practice coming up with new business ideas daily

It's easy man! You just find a few things to complain about everyday and make up a solution for them!

But of course, I know now and I knew back then my obsession with THE ONE BIG IDEA was just an excuse for inaction.

But maybe the opposite is also true, maybe the practice of coming up with business ideas daily can be the first step on a successful starter's journey.

You can also find all my ideas on Kata Club, along with any other user submitted public ideas. I created Kata Club so others can practice and document their ideas in public also.

Hope this post has intrigued you enough to give daily idea creation a try.

P.S If you made it this far, thanks for reading! This is an edited down version of my blog post, you can find the full version with the lessons more flushed out here.

 

[nelsemacio]

@acco340 In business, "do what you can, NOW". You are thinking and preparing way way too much.

It is like someone who has a girl friend who always prepare to get someone "better".

Over thinking kills time. Entrepreneurship is 90% SELLING. Every idea is good enough, and yet really nothing is really necessary.

 

[lyjp]

@acco340 Good read thanks for the insight. I think I need to break out a new notebook

 

[acco340]

Let me know if ya'll agree / disagree with any of the lessons. In particular I think you can make the argument that one doesn't always have to the follow the money if your user is the product .

 

[sirengo]

@acco340 I really like this post! The one thing I personally would advise people is think about your first 1/5 customers. That’s what you need for validation and product iteration. From there, you can think about more customers

 

[matthewchan]

@acco340 Extrapolate building for yourself into building for businesses!

 

[acco340]

@matthewchan I'll give that a shot and maybe revise as I get more experience building .

 

[blanksora]

@acco340 Great read! Thanks for the insight

 

[silenzer]

@acco340 I love this practice makes perfect application... I think I need to give it a shot myself ! Thanks for the inspiration!