Finding ideas

I’m currently for a short trip away from home and had some interesting talks with people interested in starting a business.

One particular question came from ‘Max’, whom I met somewhere random, about how to find ideas?

I said to him that this is actually the easiest part. Simply make a list of all the things that annoy, bother or irritate you. Solve that. And there is your idea.

Now finding a potential success formula requires a little more digging.

The bigger a problem is, the more you can get rewarded per customer.

Bigger can be in people affected by this problem and/or complexity of the problem.

So, you need to identify something that is scalable or impactful, if you have any of the two right - you can make good money.

If you have both right, you can make a lot of money.

Still too vague?

Max studies and works part-time at a restaurant, the organisation has multiple locations.

He finds it difficult to find other students interested, and willing to take action, in starting a business.

I explained him that this could be the basis for a potential idea.

Starting a business is a hot topic and many students could be interested. I will dive into breaking this down in a different post but it is scalable, a potentially moderately impactful.

In the same conversation, I also asked him about his work. Things he sees that is taking him or his colleagues a lot of time. He mentioned that his manager is spending three to four hours every day on food orders.

It’s a repetitive process, time consuming and annoying for his manager.

His manager makes about thirty-five euros per hour, so that is roughly hundred-and-forty euros per day spent by the company on this task only. Assuming five work days a week, that is five-hundred-and-sixty euros EVERY week.

I explained that if he can fully, or partially, automate this process and do most of the heavy lifting for his manager — that would be a potential successful formula. It’s impactful and I bet there are more managers in restaurant burdened with the same task.

Make this solution super easy to use and license it for less, ideally one-fifth of the current costs, and it will be a no-brainer for companies to start using your software.

If you want, I will break down how I would validate an idea to determine if it’s worth spending time on this idea.

Have a great day!