How Do You Find Your Business Idea?

If you are thinking of starting your own business, you already know that there are a lot of questions when you try to find the right one: How do you find it? Are you looking at your passions or professional experience? Are “domains” more suitable for setting up a business? Is there a “native inclination” for entrepreneurship?

If you are thinking of starting your own business, you already know that there are a lot of questions when you try to find the right one. We talked about this process in detail on Thursday, May 21, in a webinar with Elena Dobre and Vlad Atanasiu from Advanced Thinking. Below you can find the main ideas from the webinar.

How can ideas or products be transformed/redesigned after a time when people no longer need/access them (such as a pandemic)?

• It is obvious that the failure rate of entrepreneurial businesses is quite high, and in the first 3 years, we see how businesses end up closing. This also happens quite often in incubators – the largest incubators in the United States, for example, are designed to “burn” entrepreneurs, so many businesses come to market in a short time, but do not resist.
• It would be ideal if you could learn and develop this aspect: how to design a business very well so as to give more confidence to entrepreneurs, and a higher success rate. Most of the time, in practice, 9 out of 10 entrepreneurs are “in a hurry”; they rush to take the idea to the end, to launch the product, but not answering fundamental questions, they end up “lost” on the road.
• When these moments of balance, of transforming a business, of a product in the market, we must come to understand the real changes that are happening around us. Take for example how the current crisis has affected us and what are the important factors – once we set these benchmarks, we will see exactly what steps to take next.
• The initial idea of ​​an entrepreneur is based on a reality in the market – in designing the idea it helps to start from what the market wants, what needs it has, and not from what you think it would like.

How could innovation be defined?

• What any business should consider is not to be innovative just for the sake of being innovative, but to take a need out of the market and really cover it – if not the same, maybe even better than it is currently covered. Take Uber as an example, a company that reinvented taxi and actually innovated the way this service was practiced, already existing, already with a real need and existing on the market.
• Usually, I’ve seen that in a lot of research projects, either you come up with something new or you come up with something significantly improved. So that doesn’t mean you have to have super technology at the end or something very advanced, it matters more if you have an idea that can significantly improve a product or service. And that means you’ve “innovated.”

What came first, the potential customer or the idea?

• In practice, I think we all know the trend – all entrepreneurs are in love with their ideas and this is something that is in the blood of any entrepreneur. But a business has a chance of success if it doesn’t solve anyone’s problem and it’s just an idea I hold dear because it’s mine and I want it to happen.
• At the same time, I may have a need in the market, but there is no one entrepreneur to solve it. This is where entrepreneurial leadership comes in: it is much easier to start from a need and satisfy it, a need that exists but does not have a solution or is not sufficiently addressed, than to start from an idea that has no market and must wait for it to “catch” at some point.

How do you get from the “voice” of the customer to the final product, to the business?

• The first step is listening to the customer, “translating” the questions, defining strategies for the product (or service), clearly defining the actual products and services and what they do, what benefits they bring and finally, how you can make everything happen. . Under no circumstances should this process be reversed, otherwise it will not work.
• The design of a business should take into account the following: what the market wants, what we want as a business, but more importantly, if it can be done, if it is achievable. In reality, only the elements desired by both parties are achievable.

How do we know exactly what the customer needs?

• First of all, I need to identify who my client is and how I can get to what he says. The more you are at the beginning, the more you will need to do a market research before anything else – this way you will find out who the customer is and look to see what he wants and there is no easier way than to ask him. How can you do this? Reading, informing you from different sources how he thinks, what he wants, what he needs, you can apply questionnaires, you can talk on the phone, ask questions, but to find out, not to confirm. The latter is one of the most common mistakes and that is why we have to do the opposite, to try to see what the client wants first and then by presenting our idea, to listen more, not to come from the first to “say ”
• There are many ways to find out what your customers need. Some are more of a technique – from one-to-one, to focus groups or actually going where the need “happens” and seeing how it looks, how it looks, to more “fine” ones, namely, surveys, conceptual testing, which already give us insights and details much closer to what we need.
• There is no valid general questionnaire to collect all this data, but it is very much designed, folded on each business separately.

Where do we look for research materials?

Research must always be designed, you need to know what questions you need data for. The recommendation is to go talk to people effectively, but be careful, a maximum of 10 interviews are enough, but a minimum of 5 potential clients. Overcome any fear of talking to them, of different interpretations, because it is really a pleasure to do this, leaving with the mindset that you will actually help them and you are left with a whole collection of needs. All these discovered needs (by actually noting their words) will give rise to quantifiable questions and then the data will be reached, either to be compared with the existing ones or to need to be generated in a questionnaire to be tested. A minimum of 100 answers results in decent proportions, which you can rely on as starting points.

How do we know if an identified need is good for starting a long-term profitable business?

• Here we must ask ourselves what it means to be profitable in the long run. Will this need be present tomorrow, and in a while (everyone calls it “long term”)? In terms of profitability, this would mean that at any point in time, my cost to meet the customer’s need becomes less than the price that the customer in need is willing to pay for a service/product.
• So you need to get information about cost and price (revenue vs. market volume) and what it looks like on this “long term” timeline, no matter how everyone sees it. It should be noted that prices vary from time to time, some are more stable, others change much faster and will depend on various factors – one very important being the competition.
• Another perspective is to design a cost of delivery that is below any trends, any factor would intervene. When the market has a much too fast pace and falls well below the initially set price, even very well thought out, then you will be determined to give up, to stop the business. It is a very important and mature moment for an entrepreneur – to know when to stop a business. When such circumstances arise, he will know that he has been able to make a profit from this business and it is time to close it.
• In order not to close the business, an entrepreneur needs to be more efficient in the way he delivers, so that he can continue to stay in the market.

What advice do you have for someone who wants to start a business but doesn’t have an idea?

• The first thing I would ask is what does that person know how to do? Even if he has identified a need in the market, how can he take it forward with his own resources and what does he like to do? The intersection between what is required, what I can do and what I need to be transformed into a business is truly special – and profitable in the long run if possible. That’s one of the questions I would ask myself and leave.
• We can also go on the exploratory technique: to ask people questions about what they would buy, what they are willing to give money for. From there we need to realize what we can offer them from everything they tell us. There are two ways we can operate: competency-based, or opportunity-based.

We can really consider the answer of the potential customer to the question: How much are you willing to pay for that product?

• I do not think that this is the time when we have to position ourselves in a negotiation with the client, but I would rather try to create a suitable framework in which to ask this question honestly and wait to receive a sincere answer. The client must understand that following his honest answer, you are actually helping him, and his answer helps you in designing and turning your idea into a business. If finding out how much he is willing to pay is far more than what you set out to do for that business, then it’s best not to go further and keep researching.
• The price question is delicate and must be put within a certain framework of the customer. It does not have to be very general, because what you offer as a product/service at that price must be very clear to the customer and have it imprinted in mind, to “see” it somehow as you create it, so it can be as reliable as possible and the price can be realistic. There are also two verification questions: if the client already has the money and if this money is already spent on something similar.

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