Idea
In order to generate an idea, think about personal problems you want to solve. Things, you really understand. Drew Houston, the founder of Dropbox, wanted to work while being on an intercity bus ride, but he forgot the usb drive he needed for work. So his personal problem was the absence of data synchronization across multiple devices. What did he do? He started coding a prototype right on the bus.
Do you know who Pavel Durov is? The founder of VK, one of the largest social networks in the world, he was forced to shut down several political opposition groups on the network. Respecting the freedom of speech, he denied the governmental requests. After a SWAT team tried to raid his apartment in St. Petersburg he wanted to call his brother Nikolai and he realized, there is no way of a secure communication he can use. His phone was tapped, the Internet communication was surveilled by the government. This is how he came up with an idea of creating Telegram — a messaging app with a focus on speed and security. Now (September 2015) it delivers 12 billion messages a day!
You should have an idea you are passionated about. Something, what you think about day and night. If you become sceptic after a week — forget it. Think about something else.
Audience
There should be people who would use your product right now, even a barely working version of it. This is what made Dropbox so successful — it had a wide audience and the idea had great potential. When you come up with an idea, ask people around. Explain it to them and ask, if they want to use it right away. Make a rapid prototype, a rough draft. Don’t worry about design and usability. Get feedbacks from your friends, relatives, co-workers etc.
Team
Of course you need a team. Drew Houston teamed up with his fellow student Arash Ferdowsi and they spent several months working on Dropbox together. Find someone who you trust and who shares the same opinions and team up! This way it is easy to stay motivated and it’s also fun to work together. If you are building a tech product with a graphical user interface, the design and user experience are extremely crucial. If you are a designer, you would need a coder and vice versa.
Competitors
Know what you’re up against. Make a research, think of your competitor’s weaknesses. The Telegram’s biggest competitor is WhatsApp. So what does Telegram do about it? Conversations are encrypted and data is delivered using a custom transport protocol MTProto which was also developed by them. Telegram allows you to store your data on its cloud service. Telegram has clients for every platform and they work perfectly. It is way better than WhatsApp: you do not need to keep your smartphone being connected to the Internet for the whole time and it works in every browser, not only in Google Chrome. Telegram also has an awesome API and you can even create bots using it and do lots of other cools things.
Investors
After 3 month of working on Dropbox, Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi moved to San Francisco and attracted investments from Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners and Y Combinator.
If you want to release your product after building a prototype you should make sure it is well-conceived and perfectly designed. In order to achieve these goals you require resources. You need money to keep your servers running and so on. This infographic describes how funding works.
Habits
It’s all about habits when we talk about a successful business. This way you keep your audience. What do most people do when they are bored nowadays? We unblock our smartphones, open the Facebook, Twitter or Instagram feed. What kind of habit is it? Think about what you do, when you launch the Facebook app. First, you check your notifications because you want to know what happened in your absence. Then you scroll down and read new posts, look for interesting stuff. You see a picture you like, you tap on it. What’s next? You swipe to the left to view the next one. Those steps are a part of our habits. It belongs to our daily routine. There is a nice article about habits and businesses you might be interested in.
Monetize
Try not to think about monetizing in the beginning. Focus on the quality and make your users happy. When your product gained users and their number is constantly growing — this might be the moment to think about monetizing.
Keep going
Lots of people failed before they came to success. Never give up, be creative, get inspired.
