It’s incredibly easy to have what constitutes as a ‘startup idea’, you take an emerging behaviour (streaming movies online, using YouTube as a music player, tweeting about the weather) and pair it up with a new business model (subscription, micro payments or let’s-build-it-and-see).
Next step is coming up with a name that ends neatly in a url ( .co or .ly). Register it.
Done. Or so you think. It feels like you exist.
But you’re almost further away from realising an idea than you were before you had the idea. Because the effort and excitement you’ve put in so far, will keep you from rethinking it or adapting it to the reality you now face.
Before you even start thinking about if anyone would want it, what gap in the market you’re exploiting or the famous exist strategy. Ask yourself 2 things:
Can you build it? Are you central to the idea?
Your Spotify for travel, Groupon for experiences, Foursquare for music or AirBnB for cars.
I always have to say no to those two questions.
You will always learn a lot during the process of trying to get one of those things of the ground, how to write a business plan, how to pitch, how to make absolutely ridiculous risk calculations etc.
But you will mainly learn, that if you’re starting a web based business, the first thing you write, should be a line of code. Not a business proposition.
The next thing I’m doing with my friend Tom, starts from what we can do ourselves, and what we love doing. An idea which we’re central to and can build with existing tools.
Update on that soon.
