How to Find a Business Idea for Your Startup
Updated: Nov 28, 2022
Do you have the desire to be an entrepreneur, but don't have a business idea yet? Or have you thought of some ideas but couldn't decide which one is worth working on? This first step of finding a problem to be solved is certainly a fundamental step and one that can involve many variables. The purpose of this post is to bring, in a structured and clear way, fundamental points to be thought about when deciding which idea to choose for your Startup.
Every business must be very clear about the pain of its customers (Pain Points) it wants to alleviate. If those pains don't exist, customers won't pay for the solution no matter how incredible it sounds. Several aspects can be taken into consideration when choosing a pain you want to resolve, and we believe that eight factors are the ones that best consolidate them:
Experiences
Throughout our lives we have gone through several experiences, in which we probably felt some pain during the process we were doing. Whether we were trying to get somewhere, we ate some type of food, we needed to send some document to someone, we wanted to rent an apartment, we tried to perform some activity at work that took much longer than we imagined. Reflecting on pain experienced personally can be a great way to raise potential issues for the business, given that since you felt these pains, other people probably felt it too. In your personal activities, do you feel any pain in any process you carry out? And in your professional experiences, have you noticed any "Pain Point" at any stage of a process carried out by you or your team?
Passion
We know that the vast majority of businesses take time and a lot of effort to succeed. To go through the whole process of achievements and frustrations along the way, it is essential that employees, especially the founders, have a very strong desire to solve the problem they set out to solve so that they don't end up giving up on the business. Having the knowledge of which areas or subjects shine the most in the eye and aligning this with the business can help a lot along the entire entrepreneurial journey. What is the area that most motivates you to work to solve a problem. Education? Transport? Financial?
Knowledge
Having knowledge about the process you want to solve people's "Pain Points" can be a great advantage. Having prior knowledge can help a lot in understanding the problems and their causes, helping to consolidate an idea (solution) that is really effective. Try to answer questions like:
What is the focus of your academic background or career?
What do you know more about?
What are you and your colleagues recognized for? Any technology developed or study carried out?
Connections
Talking to people who are already on the entrepreneurial journey can help a lot not to make mistakes. From the exchange of experiences with other entrepreneurs, the company can acquire knowledge much faster, focus on the right things at the right time or even receive their first investments. Meeting people with in-depth knowledge of the business or technologies that may be related to the solution can help a lot to build better products and services. Incubators and Accelerators are great places to meet other entrepreneurs and connect with specialists in specific fields. What other entrepreneurs or experts in other industries do you know?
Financial Resources
There are ideas that may require much more investment than others, evaluating the amount you have available to invest in the business is certainly a relevant factor in deciding which problem to choose to solve. For example, a solution like Loft, a company that buys, renovates and sells apartments, will most likely require much more financial resources to be tested in the beginning than a company like Gympass, a one-time pass for the use of thousands of gyms that works digitally. Thus, it is important to ask yourself if the amount you have access to is enough to start the business.
Commitment
Generally, the desire to start a business occurs while we are working in other companies or studying. Having a team that is willing to dedicate itself minimally to the business is important so that Startup's development stages are not slow and will not discourage the other members of the team. Also, some businesses may require more time from the founders than others, depending on the problem, solution, and even available financial resources. Do you and your colleagues have enough time to devote to the endeavor?
Market size and growth
This is a step that we'll talk about in more detail in another post, but in the step of choosing which business to choose, it's essential to have an idea of the size of the market and if it is growing rapidly. This will give you a good clue as to how much opportunity there is.
Competition
Large and fast-growing markets are likely to have a large growth in the number of competitors as well. Taking this factor into consideration along with the size and growth of the market is very important, as well as assessing whether the market is dominated by any specific Player.
We hope these eight factors will help you and your team choose the problem you want to solve. We also recommend watching the video "How to Start a Startup" by Sam Altman, president of one of the largest startup accelerators in the world, Y Combinator.