Bad-ideas

Sometimes the idea you have is just bad, and you shouldn’t build a business around it.

I don’t like to be negative, but one thing that can cause a lot of problems for founders is that they fall in love with an idea that only they can love.

Failure to find product-market fit is the number one thing that kills startup businesses, and one way to look at product market fit is whether or not your solution passes a “so what?” test. Imagine you are trying to explain the solution to a surly teenager.

In my experience, non-technology founders are less affected by this problem. It affects founders from a technology background more, because technology people can fall in love with solutions and then shop around looking for a solution. (I’ve seen so many crappy ideas that fit into this category, I can’t even begin to tell you.

For a non-technology founder to even think about starting a technology business, there tends to be more of a commercial focus from the outset, and non-technology founders tend to be better at avoiding solutions that don’t pass the “so what” test.

2/Sep/2023