3 Ways to Identify a Great New Business Idea

Hello friends,

It’s been week a since the launch of Unlikely Entrepreneurs and the book was just featured in Inc. Magazine.

Here is an excerpt from the piece. Thank you to Graham Winfrey, deputy editor at Inc., for making bringing this feature to life!

What if you have a really good idea for a startup or a new product line within a mature company, but you haven’t directly lived the problem? This doesn’t mean you should forgo launching your venture. You do need, however, to delve into extensive and objective market research and speak with as many potential prospects and customers you can find. This is crucial in confirming an actual need for your product or service and whether it can attract a large market.

But how do you conduct research without potentially giving away your idea? This is a risk you have to take. While it is important to file for intellectual property protection for your idea, it is rare that the winner in the market always gets awarded a patent. Far more important is winning in the market. What counts most is securing customers faster than your competitors.

Here are three ways to help identify a promising new business idea.

We recommend talking to at least 100 people and asking them all roughly the same questions. If you are launching a business-to-consumer product, you need to talk to 200 to 300 more. You need a lot of data and insights to understand if the problem you aim to solve is actually worth solving.

It’s crucial to avoid asking “Mom Test” questions. The term was coined by Rob Fitzpatrick who wrote a bestselling book with the same name. Just because your mom, who is perhaps your biggest fan, thinks your idea is good doesn’t mean it will succeed. Your goal is to determine what level of “pain” your potential customers are experiencing because they don’t yet have your prospective product or service.

Is there enthusiasm in response to your idea? If the people you are speaking with had to rank their problems, would the one you aim to solve make it into the top one or two on a scale of ten? If there isn’t enough real pain present, your target market has most likely found another product or service good enough to solve the problem. You may even discover that the people you speak with aren’t experiencing the problem you’re setting out to solve.

After interviewing friends and family members, lean into your professional social networks and organizations you belong to. Ask your connections if they’ll take 15 minutes to discuss your business idea. After you’ve exhausted these connections, you must do the hard work of cold-calling or sending cold outbound email messages to your potential prospects. You may think your idea is great, even revolutionary, an obvious winner. But your prospects are busy people, and getting access to their time is difficult.

Read the full piece on Inc.com

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The support online and at our events for the book has been incredible. Thank you!

All the best,

Lou and Trish