What is your business idea? What was your reaction to it, when you had your idea? Was it “Heureka! Halleluia! Wow, why has nobody else thought of this before?” Or was it “I think if we do it this way, it might add additional benefit to our potential customers.” The more you force yourself to find a business idea, the higher the chance you will fail. What is a good business idea? A new business model? A new way of doing something cheaper than competitors? A new rocket-science technology to search the internet? I guess they all might be… or might not.
success = product x marketing
There are three forces, that influence a business idea:
Market: who will eventually buy your product and generate revenue? Why should they? What is their additional benefit, if they use your product (and not the competitors’)? Ask yourself: what are their needs?
Technology: this is the way you’re solving a problem or how you’re creating a value. How much does this solution fulfill their needs? The amount is their benefit. Now, is your idea really adding a benefit to your customers?
Strategy: how will you get into the market? Is your solution simple enough that customers will buy/use it immediately after they’ve seen it? Maybe you’re stimulating a need that the customer doesn’t know yet. You would need to give it away for free to have a focus group, who will spread the word to others. Or you might need to evangelize and tell everyone about your great new prototype and convince them of its benefits. There are dozens of ways to get into the market.
Failing to handle one of these forces will cause you to fail. Strategy is important for your business to survive. The other two are crucial for your succes: “success = product x marketing”. This means, you’ll be better off, if you have a good product and if you talk about it! Microsoft talks a lot about Vista, but the product is not that convincing (my view). Roger Federer is a great player, but seldom talks about it. Both Microsoft and Federer are only successful, because they are so briliant with the one multiplier that they bail-out the other. Are you as brilliant as Roger?
If you really create something meaningful, people will like it. They will talk about it. They’ll even do the marketing for you. But you must talk about it too! If you put your energy into marketing as well, you’ll accelerate the process. So tell me, what do you do?
Guy Kawasaki puts it right in his speech about “The Art of the Start”:
Now as a venture capitalist I can tell you, that we meet many times the entrepreneurs and they come in an think they are saying, what we want to hear, which is we want to make money. We believe, that with our P2P optimized Google adwords brand new model collecting millions of eyeballs, we can quickly flip this company and sell it to Google or Yahoo or Apple or Microsoft. If not, if they don’t take us off the market in 18 months, we will go public.
When we hear that, it’s so depressing, because I figured out that companies that are successful, they start out to make meaning, not to make money. [...]
If you make meaning, you will make money.
Getting back to my question at the beginning of this post, I want to ask you again. Which reaction to an idea is more promising:
- I think if we do it this way, it might add additional benefit to our potential customers.
- Heureka! Halleluia! Wow, why has nobody else thought of this before?
The first is looking for money. The second creates meaning (at least for you and that’s the start). If your customers also show the same reaction. Go for it and enjoy!
In my opinion, one of the best examples for this is Doodle:
It’s simple and easy scheduling: Doodle makes it easy to find a date and time for a group event. The Swiss start-up was created to solve the founder’s own need to schedule events with his friends. He set up such a neat and user-friendly solution that even my dad uses day by day.
Another start-up that creates meaning is smartfish. Smartfish is a new concept of airplane design to make flying safer and less fuel-consuming. The venture hasn’t taken off yet. Maybe the industry prevents this start-up from getting into the market. I don’t know. However, in times of global warming, I think it’s meaningful to look for more ecological ways to fly: