Ideation
“One of the strangest things is the act of creation.”
Not often in life do we get to start with a blank slate. Here we are, sitting across from each other, trying to figure out what we are going to do with the next decade of our lives.
Where do we start? Where do ideas come from? What is a good idea? Which industry should we pick?
The investor survey
So we started where I knew best — asking investors in my network what tickles their fancy these days. After meeting a few, we realized what should have been obvious: they had a broad sector focus, but not much beyond that.
Inspirations and ideas usually came from startup entrepreneurs, while investors reacted to them.
Through this exercise, we realized that we need to draw some boundary conditions around our search, else we were boiling the ocean.
Boundary conditions
First, we started a conversation to understand ourselves. Are we lifestyle entrepreneurs or growth entrepreneurs? Will we be tech driven or tech enabled?
After a lot of introspection (some high spirits were involved), we decided that some pre-conditions were necessary for what we wanted to do:
1. The market has to be large
At least $1Bn in size. Then picking a market gap and attacking it with focus and energy would be worth the effort.
2. The product has to be differentiated
We realized that we enjoy using design to differentiate our business. There are folks who like to create a cheaper version of an existing product, playing on price and cost structure. We aren’t those guys.
3. It has to interest both of us
There are a million problems to solve. We wanted to pick something that both of us would like to do for the next 10 years or more.
So, what did we pick? Coming up in the next blog post!
