May 31, 2015
How to Start: Idea Generation
Let's take one step back... the very first step, long before you're trying to raise your fund to investors.
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You need to have a viable IDEA for your startup.
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First of all, not all ideas are worth following up. Business ideas worth pursuing, in our opinion, have these characteristics:
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it can last for 20 years
it can create 500 jobs
it can change the lives of 1 million people
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But, how to find ideas?
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There's a good practise that we do in Founder's Institute Jakarta (courtesy of our own @andyzain) to generate ideas, we called it Ideation Workshop (of course). It actually follows one of design thinking approach: divergent-convergent thinking. There are 5 steps.
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Step 1. Brainstorm - aim to get 25 ideas at least. Why? Because at this point you need to explore your options and not be fixated to one idea.
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List down business ideas that comes from:
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Passion
Anger
Curiosity
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In brainstorming, apply the usual techniques: e.g. defer judgement, build upon the previous ideas, be wild.
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Step 2. Evaluate - try to shortlist your ideas (aim to get 10), the key criteria is whether you will obsess over that idea for years to come. The idea should match your personality.
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Step 3. Research (aim to get down to 3-5 ideas after this step) - now let's get some data points from the market... find out about a similar companies/initiatives:
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Who failed?
Who succeeded?
Is it really needed?
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If no one did it before, then question your ideas! If too many people fails, also question your ideas, can you make it succeed this time?
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Step 4. Discuss - and try to get out of the building and talk to potential customers. This is where you collect external views about your idea. Our benchmark is to have a survey of:
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For B2C co's: survey 500 customers and conduct 25 interviews
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For B2B co's: meet 20 domain experts, 10 businesses, try to pitch and get 3 Letter of Intents
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Step 5. Kill - by now you'll know the ideas that don't get enough traction in previous step... Kill them. Choose one that is promising, and pursue it to the max!
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Try this next time you want to build something. What are you waiting for?
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(featured photo by Mark Sebastian - http://www.flickr.com/photos/markjsebastian licensed under Creative Common CC BY-SA 2.0)
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About Founder Institute Jakarta (JKTFI)
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JKTFI aims to improve the rate of startup success by providing potential entrepreneurs with mentor support, critical objective feedback & peer support.