The Big Idea

OK we’ve got through Day 1, now it’s Blog 1. And to pile on more pressure let’s make it all about the Big Idea.  The idea that needs to be so good it’s worth walking away from your stable income, from your bonus, pension and benefits, your workmates, everything you know.

Gulp. It better be good right?

As you start telling your colleagues you’re leaving they will judge your sanity by how good they think the idea sounds.

I feel this pressure. Every day. It’s very real – can you really be taking a chance on your life without a meticulously formed idea that can start making money immediately?

Corporate ideation

I have ideas, honestly, but they’re poorly formed. And I keep telling myself that’s ok. For a while at least. Like a few months, maybe six at most. But during these six months I do need to get clearer. That for me isn’t really the problem; I’m confident I can bring clarity and definition.

For me the bigger problem is one I suspect I nurtured in corporate life. Rushing to just do something. Even if it may not be the right thing. Such is the pressure to show you’re delivering, even if the idea itself may not be the best. Right now that’s a risk I can’t take. Nor can you.

Idea liberation

Actually, it’s incredibly liberating to come up with ideas without recourse to strategic fit, politics, hurdle rates, your real job. So enjoy this period, wallow in it for much longer than you’d expect.

But where do you find ideas?

The unhelpful answer is everywhere. The more helpful one is to focus on things that frustrate you in some way, things that need improving, things that someone has half solved, things that need linking together or reworking in some way to make a customer’s life easier.

There are tonnes of websites and articles and email subs you can join to get your creative juices going.

Your idea needs to solve a problem for someone. Well more than for one person, but maybe not as many as you think. I am a huge fan of niches - ideas that solve problems for a small number of people. At least start off that way – to draw in early adopters; you can always broaden later.

I love this Medium article about finding ideas in anomalies. And also the idea of market-product fit, which lies behind my business idea Familiarize.

For me the idea came before I left bp, when I was searching for a tool that could help the founding team build and deepen our understanding of our customer. We’d done the persona work up front then got focused on building (strategy, product, brand, marketing, partnerships, new markets etc) without a single view of our customer. I felt confident a tech SaaS solution should exist, but I couldn’t find one. Still can’t. So I feel confident of the pain, but am unsure on the feasibility.

Don’t fixate

As much as it has frustrated me over the Christmas holiday period to not have a properly formulated idea, I am deliberately resisting it. I’m keeping multiple options on the table.

I’m going to really try to break the urge to lock things down before I’m really sure the idea is a good enough one. And that means I’m sure other people – those willing to pay - think it’s a good idea too.

I’m doing this now – and it’s illuminating. What I thought was a brilliant idea – because I would have paid for it when inside a corporate – I’m less sure about today. But I’m not going to throw it away, I’m going to keep working it – keep testing it, keep listening to what potential customers say they like, don’t like and need – and at some stage I’ll decide yes, this is the one.

It took Paypal’s super bright co-founders a year, pivoting multiple times, until they found their Big Idea, so don’t panic.

3 lessons on the Big Idea:

1.     Don’t overload yourself with pressure on coming up with the best idea – you no longer need to waste time selling your idea up the chain – and it’s perfectly ok not to know for a while at least, in fact it will make for better ideas

2.     Ideas are actually pretty easy to come up with unconstrained by corporate rules – you can be anything! Test your ideas quickly for feasibility (can it be done?), viability (can you make money) and above all desirability (fit with your passion and purpose - is it something that matters to you?)

3.     Your idea is only as good as the number of people willing to pay for it; get out of the office and start talking to customers – keep asking “what if”. One idea leads to another, just make sure you log them somewhere. The good ones keep coming back and fight for attention so you can’t drop them. And outside of the corporate you’re free to talk without cloak and dagger and NDAs – my experience is people want to help you not steal from you.

And now you’re a startup you don’t need to define this period as (the rather silly named) “ideation”, because coming up with new ideas is something you’re free to do all the time.

Next topic is Working alone. Drop me a line at adam@gofamiliarize.com if you have any specific questions

or things you want me to cover.