How To Find And Validate Your Business Idea

Have you ever wondered how the ideas behind super successful companies are birthed? I have and I know that it’s not always something that happens in a coffee shop. Or in the bathroom!

The process of finding a business idea that’s actually viable is a skill that can be mastered. 

In this post, we are going to go through simple steps that’ll help you come up with better business ideas. And also help you figure out which one’s the right one. 

Let’s begin. 

Finding Your Business Ideas

One thing to note before we dive deep into this is that a good business idea doesn’t have to be a reinvention of the proverbial wheel. We can’t all be Steve Jobs. 

However, if you can improve on an existing idea and create more satisfaction for your target audience, then you can begin to get your hopes up about going on to launch a successful product.

But, how do you get those ideas in the first place?

The steps outlined below will help you achieve that. 

Get Your Creative Juice Flowing 

First, you need to get in the mood. You can start by getting a sheet of paper and creating an exhaustive list of everything you’re good at. Nothing is too awkward or too insignificant to make this list. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re a good team leader or the best pizza maker in town; as long as it’s your specialty, it should make this list.

When you’re done with this list, get another sheet of paper (or just turn the first one over) and create another list of things that don’t fall into your comfort zone. 

The same rule applies here. Everything that comes to your mind should be written down. 

By the time you are done with this exercise, you should already know yourself a bit better. And also be primed for the next step in finding your business idea. 

Identify Your Type Of Business 

There’s nothing wrong with learning new skills but you don’t want to start a business that you’ll lose interest in when the going gets tough. 

You should identify areas that you feel comfortable discussing. It doesn’t matter if they are more than one, this process will at least help you focus your attention on areas that you’re interested in. 

Another thing is this:

You don’t want to worry too much about your skill set. Like I mentioned earlier, skills can always be learnt. And it is especially easier to learn a new skill if it’s about something you’re passionate about. 

What you want to watch out for is how much enthusiasm you can put in and how long that enthusiasm level will last. Running a startup isn’t easy and your experience will most likely be rough before it gets better. You need to make sure that you can persevere long enough for you to break even. 

Discover Solvable Problems In Your Society

Now that you already know what areas interest you, it is time to brainstorm problems that plague those areas. 

The best place to start is yourself. 

What inconvenience do you have to deal with in your personal life? 

What about your work life? Is there something you’d like to change? 

All these matters and there’s a high probability that you are not the only one who has these issues. This means that your solution might already have an available market even before it is launched. 

You can also ask your friends and colleagues to tell you about any inconvenience they put up with regularly. You might find a gem of an idea from the input you receive. 

While you are identifying problems to solve, you should also consider why a solution hasn’t been rolled out yet. 

Is it too expensive to produce? Is it hard to implement? Or are people just not ready to adopt the new solution? 

If you factor in these considerations, you should be able to narrow down your list of problems worth solving. 

Watch Out For Those Trends

If you want to be ahead of your would-be competitors, you need to be able to predict the future of a particular market.

The ability to jump on new waves long before anybody notices might spell the difference between the success and failure of your business idea. Take the ideas you have gotten and try to predict how the market will react to them in the future. 

This will help you find more possibilities to exploit. 

Prioritize Your Ideas

At this stage, you should already be leaning towards a particular idea. Now, you want to trim down you list of ideas to a maximum of three. 

You should list your final three ideas in rank order with the first idea being  the one that excites you the most. 

These three ideas are what you are going to try to validate or test. 

Validating Your Business Ideas

This is the moment of truth. You can’t just assume that you have a viable business idea because it sounds good to you. You have to put in the work to test your ideas and see which one of them is most likely to stand the test of time. 

You can do that by answering these three questions :

What problem is my idea solving?

Is there an available market willing to pay for my solution? 

Why should they choose me?

These questions are important as you don’t want to be selling a pipe dream to the society. And considering the fact that running a business is hard enough, you want to be doing yourself little favours by reducing risks wherever you can. 

Our effective market research team can help you confirm or disprove the validity of your business idea. Get in touch with us.