| I'd argue that in finding a subject for a startup, you don't want to find a problem. I mean, why would anyone want problems? What you want for a startup is fertile ground. ------- Go to the nearest upper-middle-class person you know (at the 10th percentile of revenues). Ask for their account statement. For each line, try to answer the following: 1) What are the margins? Is the price of the item driven by costs of production, or by what people accepted to pay? You want the latter. Prefer emotional over utility. 2) How did the person came to know the product? What were the drivers of acquiring the product? What did close the sale? What were the alternatives? 3) What is the cost of entering this market? Would you be able to do it? - Then you have a list of fertile grounds, out of which you can try to work out: 4) What can be improved over this market? How would you sell differently? 5) What can be improved over this product? What would you modify in the product? 6) Are they buying it? Build only the store front: throw a landing page somewhere, stir some activity, see if you get emails. Interview the leads you got. It's ok to announce to people you won't be doing X. 7) And then, only then, you can work on a problem to exploit the scarcity of being the only one having solved it. |