How to Reduce the Risk of a Brand New Business Idea

People think being a good entrepreneur means that you’re a huge risk taker that’s overly daring. I hate to break it to you: That’s a false media stereotype.

Being an entrepreneur just means that you’re inherently curious. It means that you’ve often asked yourself, “Why is this process done this way?” or “Is there a better way to do this?”

Take my idea of replacing pen and paper scorekeeping with a digital interface. I simply asked, “Is there a better way to keep stats in basketball?” See, nothing overly risky about that question.

So, if it’s not the idea that’s risky, maybe the risk lies in the execution, right?

If you come up with an idea and blindly jump into execution/building mode without any formation of a plan… Yes, that is extremely risky.

Good entrepreneurs spend a fair amount of time trying to de-risk their idea — they want to objectively prove that not only is their idea good, but that people are willing to pay for it — before they start executing on it.

De-Risking Your Business Idea with the Business Model Canvas

How do you start to de-risk your idea?

One famous framework entrepreneurs use to de-risk an idea is called a business model canvas. A business model canvas helps entrepreneurs pragmatically think about how their idea will thrive in the real world and all the people that may directly or indirectly interact with it.

This is where being curious comes back into play because after you come up with that great idea, the next question to ask (and this is a big one): How will the idea work?

A framework like the business model canvas is uniquely designed to help entrepreneurs try to answer that critical question and others to avoid catastrophe.

For my passion project, my next step is to figure out how digitizing scorekeeping will work in the real world. My next few posts will be me going through the business model canvas for my idea — I welcome feedback and questions!