Stop killing your business ideas

Dheine Rami
The Startup
Published in
4 min readApr 20, 2018

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Raw #5

I’ve had a lot of business ideas these last couple of years. Trying to build the next Uber, I was always looking for THE idea. Thinking I needed to find something that had never been created before.

I mean, I have big ambitions, how the hell am I gonna reach them if I don’t get the most unique and original idea, right?

WRONG.

The belief that you need to find THE idea to be able to achieve big things like building a big and profitable business is not true.

It’s all a question of perspective. From where you stand as someone who has big ambitions, you look up to companies like Facebook, Uber and Airbnb thinking that building something similar is the only way to reach a high level of success.

But you forget about all these other companies that are making millions in sales every year. Companies you wouldn’t even think they make any sales.

For a long time, I wouldn’t believe that simple ideas could create great companies. Sometimes it’s not even an idea but a simple product, something very basic. I’d often say, “no one will buy that” or “who even look at this shop?”

I was a fool.

I realised how stupid I was when I started watching Shark Tanks. Seeing hundreds of business being built on top of simple ideas or products and making millions in sales.

A good example is Scrub Daddy, one of the most successful business in Shark Tank. Since 2012 he’s made more than $50 millions in sales.

On the right Scrub Daddy CEO — Pitching his product on Shark Tank.

That’s when my perspective shifted, and I started to allow other ideas in my mind. I stopped saying “nobody will buy this.”

The best ideas don’t have to be original or unique. You just need to be different, as I like to say, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Sometimes you don’t even have to be different. There are businesses who only sell flower, glass or knife. Yet they are (more than) profitable by selling something basic.

The point is, don’t underestimate businesses. We live in a big economy, and everyone can get a share of it. Some people will buy things that you don’t even know exist, does it makes it a bad product? No, it’s just a niche business.

Have you ever seen a successful business and said I could have thought of that? Me too.

But I bet that if you had thought of it, you wouldn’t have created that business. Not because you’re lazy but because you think your idea will not interest others.

I beg you, whenever you have a new idea, don’t say nobody will buy it just because you “think” that.

What you think doesn’t matter.

The market matter.

And it’s made of a lot of different people who buy very different things.

So next time, instead of killing your ideas, try them, test the market and see how it reacts.

Thank you for taking the time to read. This post is part of a serie of daily post called "RAW"; I started writing daily posts to expose my content and receive feedback, so feel free to comment if you think anything is wrong. These daily posts are just my feeling at the moment, raw ideas fresh out of my mind.

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