How to Find a Good Business Idea

Solve your own problems

Look to your own problems with life, tasks, work, etc. Observe your own patters of behavior when it comes to tackling these issues in your life. If you can solve your own problems, you can package it to sell to other people like you.   

Work within your subject matter expertise

If you go through with starting a new project, you’re going to have to become the expert. A head start will be handy.

Ask your friends and family for biased feedback

Unless they are subject matter experts and/or the target audience, filter their input.

Ask the target audience for unbiased feedback

Identify and locate your ideal customer, in the real world, and online. Ask them open-ended questions about the problem/solution paradigm. Your aim is to get to the core of the problem, as they experience it.

After you speak to 50 people, who fit your ideal customer profile, your perspective on the matter will inevitably change. This will take a moment, but by the time you're through, you should understand the problem in a far more nuanced way, having aggregated the experiences and perceptions of your target audience. 

You'll gain the necessary perspective to either put this one aside or begin the epic journey of building a solution.

Stress test the idea to learn if its good or not

Validate. Set up a hypothesis and try to break it. If it survives under duress, you’ll know you’re onto something.


Photo by Bruno Scramgnon from Pexels.