2 Great Tips for Coming up with Better Startup Ideas

This is an excerpt from my ebook titled, ‘From Idea to Incubator’. If you’re interested in receiving a free copy when it becomes available later this month, subscribe to my email list here.

I remember the first business idea I ever came up with. I was on my way to a friend’s place to watch the Raptors game — conveniently passing by Invest Ottawa (my local government-funded accelerator) — when I saw a cyclist at the intersection raise her left hand above her head to indicate a right turn.

That’s when it hit me: turn signals for bikes.

Biking with one hand in the air can’t be safe! And surely some drivers are unfamiliar with hand signals — that could be dangerous too!

I’m gonna be rich.

That night, as soon as I returned home, I google-searched ‘bicycle turn signals’ and arrived on an amazon page that, to my dismay, was filled with 56 alternatives to my ‘brilliant’ idea — none of which looked to be selling very well. I hung my head in defeat and went to bed.

After a few years of habitual ideation and 3 years of working alongside countless entrepreneurs as the Director of a student-run incubator, my ideas have improved dramatically. So much, in fact, that I now run a blog called ‘Steal My Startup’ where I regularly give ideas and accompanying execution tips away for free.

Here are two key exercises I employ on a regular basis to generate better ideas:

1) Make Ideation a Workout

Fresh off my ‘bike turn signals’ disappointment, I continued to formulate ideas, write them down on multi-coloured post-it notes, and stick them to an empty wall in my basement bedroom. I must have looked like a disgruntled 90’s detective trying to solve a bizarre and colourful crime.

First Month of Post-It Note Ideas

The ideas were downright embarrassing at the start but as the months went on, they got better; more novel; more fleshed out; more defensible.

Your mind is a muscle. Just as it takes hundreds of bicep curls spread out over many months to strengthen your arms, so too does it take hundreds of ideas produced consistently to sharpen your mind.

And just like a muscle, your mind atrophies from disuse. Make a habit out of coming up with ideas and, over time, you’ll notice those ideas grow in breadth, depth, and potential.

Exercise:

A fun icebreaker game that’s often played at Startup Weekends, called ‘Half-Baked’, challenges participants to take two words and generate a business idea with them. You’d be surprised by how many people end up moving forward with those half-baked ideas. If you’re in need of some inspiration, ask a friend to give you two words.

2) Train Yourself to Notice Problems

Think back on my ‘bike turn signals’ example… I came up with an idea and then tried to justify its need by making assumptions about other people’s difficulties. Phrased another way: my solution preceded the problem.

At this point, I’ve counted 56 LED turn signals for bikers available on Amazon. Have you seen anyone using them? That’s what I thought.

42% of startup failures are due to no market need. The advantage of taking a ‘problem first’ approach to ideation (encountering a problem and then coming up with an idea to solve it) is that you can at least be sure that you are scratching someone’s itch: your own.

To come up with new ideas for my blog, ‘Steal My Startup’, I simply tune in to my emotions while going about my day and make note of where and when I’m feeling annoyed, inconvenienced, bored, angry, etc. Whenever I experience these negative emotions, I turn my focus outward to determine the root cause. Once identified, I decide if my experience is somewhat universal (at least for a large enough group of people) to indicate a big enough business opportunity. If so, I imagine a startup that could solve the problem.

To sum up my steps for ideation:

1. Go about your day and let a negative emotion trigger you
2. Identify the external factors that are causing you to experience that negative emotion
3. Determine if enough people face the same problem
4. Imagine a business that solves the problem

As I sit here writing this article at a nearby coffee shop, an example comes to mind:

1. “I just grabbed a coffee from Starbucks, and I want to sit down and work. Why am I feeling annoyed?”
2. “It’s a beautiful day outside, but I can’t sit on the Starbucks patio because I need to charge my computer and there are no outlets outside.”
3. “There are loads of people inside the coffee shop and few are sitting outside on this beautiful day. This must be for the same reason as me because most of them have their electronics plugged in and some are sharing outlets with other customers. There’s an opportunity here!”
4. “What if there was a company that made sleek, high-quality power banks and charging stations and sold them to coffee shops for use by their customers? Patrons wouldn’t have to limit their seating options based on outlet availability and stores may get more sit-in business as a result!”

The disadvantage to this approach is that the resulting ideas are limited by your own experiences — you’ll never organically encounter the same problems as a skydiver if you’ve never jumped out of a plane yourself. That’s why it’s important to seek out as many new experiences as you can: they will often lead you to discover opportunities in worlds that you were otherwise unaware of.

Exercise:

You’re going to roll your eyes at this, but I’ll say it anyway: try meditation. Labeling your emotions and asking yourself ‘why do I feel this way?’ is much easier said than done. Meditation helps you pause and reflect as your mood shifts. I’ve found that apps like Headspace and Calm are great tools for improving your self-awareness quickly.

Thanks for taking the time.

This is an excerpt from my ebook titled, ‘From Idea to Incubator’. If you’re interested in receiving a free copy when it becomes available later this month, subscribe to my email list here.

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