What to ask yourself when you have your next idea?

One morning you wake up with an idea, that idea grows and blossoms until you think it’ll take over the world. However, starting a business is often as overwhelming as it is exciting as much as you plans get more and more elaborate, as Kriegsgechichtliche Einzelschriften (I’ll admit to struggling to pronounce that one) said “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”… not that your customers are the enemy.

One thing I’ve often found with plans is that they can be overcomplicated or often key assumptions underpinning the whole thing haven’t been stress-tested. So here are the three things I always tell founders to review and consider:

1. Understanding the Problem

A successful business solves a real problem. It’s something that I’ve come to focus on when talking to founders. What is the problem? Now this you have to do in the context of the point below in terms of users, but do you understand the problem and the pain point? Some of the best founders and businesses are those who have experienced the problem first-hand. Now this doesn’t mean if you haven’t don’t do it, but it does mean you really need to get to understand at its core what the problem is.

2. Understanding Your User

Alongside the above, you need to know who you’re building your business for. Who is your ideal customer? What are their needs, desires, and pain points? The more you understand your user, the better you can tailor your product or service to solve their specific problems.

Now once you think you’ve got to grips with the problem and the user, you can start to test your assumptions and make sure that the plans you create are underpinned by solid assumptions. How you ask? Firstly great tools like the Value Proposition Canvas and Business Model Canvas exist where you can do some initial matching between the user and their jobs and pains and your solution. Once you think there is an overlap, like I always seem to say in these blogs, GET OUT THE BUILDING. Go and talk to your ideal users and test that this is the case. The learnings you can get from these early interactions can be invaluable and it might cost you a few coffees, but the cost of that is so much less than building on faulty assumptions.

3. Understanding the Market

The final piece of the jigsaw is understanding the market you’re entering. Now you may have a killer product and your ideal users say that they’d use it, but would they pay for it? Is it a big enough problem? Is there someone else doing something similar? Now if there is what is their niche and how can you carve out your own. Having someone else in the same isn’t necessarily a bad thing, just think of how many gym groups exist int he world and are doing just fine. If anything it proves the demand, you just have to show how you’re different.

Studying your competitors, analyzing market trends, and understanding potential barriers will help you position your business uniquely. A good understanding of the market ensures that your solution doesn’t just solve a problem but does so in a way that stands out.

By focusing on these three elements, you’ll have a strong foundation to build your business on. Success starts early with clarity—about your user, their problem, and the market you’re entering. Does it guarantee success? Sadly not, but it should give you much more confidence in progressing with ideas and plans so that when you do hit first contact, your doing it with a solid base of fundamentals to fall back on.