 |
How to Easily Evaluate your Startup Idea - pART 1 |
 | 19 |
|
|
|
Submitted by gO bIG nETWORK
| RSS Feed
| Add Comment
| Bookmark Me!
After you listen to about a hundred startup company pitches you start to notice that they all sink or swim on just a few basic points. Given enough time, you don’t even need to know what the product is. Instead you just start asking whether or not the entrepreneur has the right answer to a handful of questions that validate just about any startup idea.
This isn’t about having a sixth sense about the success or failure of a potential business idea. No one has that, not even the investors sitting across from you pretending like they do. This is about boiling your startup idea down to the few principles that make all the difference in the world. So here they are, in order of importance.
The Problem / Solution Issue
Every great business idea comes down to a solution to a problem. As entrepreneurial visionaries, we sometimes get enamored with our solution at the expense of having a real problem to solve. If you’ve ever wondered what a solution looks like without a problem, just take a look at anything being sold in a Sharper Image catalog.
The value of a good product idea is proportionate to the size of the problem it solves. For example, if I tell you I have the cure to cancer I don’t even have to tell you what the product is. You inherently know what a massive problem cancer is, so certainly any solution I have must be somewhat interesting.
When you can communicate the severity of the problem to investors, and they nod their head and say “yeah, that’s a huge problem, I get it” then you’ve got an interesting business idea.
When you can communicate that same problem and back up it up with a solution that consumers respond to with “here’s my check” then you’ve actually got a business!
The Sales and Marketing Strategy
Although you may have the solution/problem thing licked, it means nothing without knowing how to bring a customer in the door. Anyone telling you that a product will sell itself should try walking into a grocery store after it’s closed. I guarantee when you don’t bring people through the door, the products don’t sell themselves!
That’s why a powerful sales and marketing plan can be even more critical to your business than an initial revenue model. Don’t get me wrong, you can’t sustain your business forever without revenue. But I’m 100% sure that without any customers you’ll never have to worry about your revenue model.
You don’t have to have a ten year plan for every type of media you will buy and sales pitch you will perform. You just need to have a basic explanation for how you can cost effectively find customers over the next year or two. Your plan might stink, but not having one is a huge red flag.
In the next part of this discussion, we will cover the revenue model and what needs to be included in your plan.
Wil Schroter is the Founder and CEO of the Go BIG Network, the largest network of startup companies and entrepreneurs at www.goBIGnetwork.com. He is also the author of the new book “Go BIG or Go HOME”.
Click for Details --> Startup Ideas - Part 2 <--
|
|
|
|
|
LinkedIn Recommendation:
 Demetrius Reardon - Search Engine Optimization Manager at Blue Galaxy Marketing - I just attended Teo's LinkedIn workshop and am getting more information on how to use it. Great stuff. He told us everything there was to know about LinkedIn in one sentence. Then went into details, then added some optional ways to use it, just so much information so quickly... I had a little trouble keeping up, but he kept coming back to that one sentence to show how it all fits. It really is easy! Love Teo's style! He's got a lot of energy and would love to meet him in person someday! - March 17, 2012, Demetrius was Teo's client |
|
Featured [Startup Idea] Articles:
|
|
