Congratulations on taking the first step toward starting your own business! However, if you’re struggling to come up with a business idea, don’t worry. It’s common to feel overwhelmed when starting out. Although I can’t provide you with a specific idea, I can offer a proven system to help you get started and discover a business idea (or multiple ideas) that is suitable for you.
Business Ideation
Although your small business idea isn’t the sole factor determining your success, it serves as the backbone of your venture. Developing a successful idea requires more than just a lucky breakthrough – in most cases, it demands conscious effort and the ability to draw inspiration from your surroundings.
How can you discover an idea for your business?
To generate business ideas, you can utilize the business ideation process consisting of four steps. First, identify a trigger that sparks your creativity, such as a problem, passion, industry trend, or unique observation. Second, conduct comprehensive research on the trigger, including competitors, customer needs, and business requirements. Third, develop a solution to address the identified problem or need, conceptualize an idea, and formulate a business model. Fourth, bring your idea to life by completing tasks such as creating a business plan, establishing an ownership structure, and registering the business. Although many people assume that building the business is the entire process, it is only one aspect of the comprehensive ideation process.
Starting a business involves more than just having an idea. It requires a series of steps and procedures to transform your concept into a viable business. Although the process may seem overwhelming, it’s manageable. Here’s a breakdown of each step to help you get started.
Getting A Enterprise Thought
There are countless business ideas available to anyone willing to look around and identify opportunities for improving their own life or the lives of those around them. Consider the following triggers to help stimulate your creativity:
Here are some additional methods to come up with a business idea:
- Solve a problem: Many successful businesses are built around solving problems that people face in their daily lives. For example, you could think about ways to make it easier to find a plumber or to speed up food delivery.
- Identify an unmet customer need: Look for markets or industries that have room for improvement, and try to identify needs that aren’t being met. This requires a deep understanding of the industry and the ability to recognize what customers are looking for.
- Apply a successful business model to a new market: Take a successful business model, such as Uber’s aggregator model, and apply it to a new market or industry. You could also make your own improvements to the model, as Postmates did with on-demand food delivery.
- Find a niche and focus on it: Instead of trying to appeal to a broad audience, focus on a specific niche and become an expert in that area. This allows you to identify the specific problems and needs of that audience and develop a solution.
- Capitalize on emerging trends: Identify emerging trends and provide products or services to capitalize on them. For example, many entrepreneurs started offering blockchain mining rigs and trading platforms when blockchain mining became popular.
- Use the intersection method: Look for intersections among your skills, interests, and network, and develop a business idea based on those intersections. For example, if you’re a software engineer who loves hiking and has connections in the outdoor gear industry, you could create a mobile app that helps hikers find assistance on trails.
- Use the drop-offering method: Find a niche with a strong following, identify sellers who offer products or services that cater to that niche, and then offer those products or services under your own brand name. For example, you could hire a freelancer to develop a website and then sell the entire package under your own brand at a premium. This is known as drop servicing. Alternatively, you could sell tangible products without actually owning the inventory, which is known as drop shipping.
Recommended: Starting a Business Without Idea
Validating the enterprise idea
After selecting the business idea that aligns with your skills and interests, the next important step is to validate and research it. It’s crucial to ensure that there’s a market demand for your proposed solution. To achieve this, you can follow the validation process:
Market Check
To validate your business idea, it’s important to conduct surveys or interviews with potential customers to confirm that there is a demand for your proposed solution. This process involves testing the problem-solution fit assumption, which assumes that your target market has the intended problem and is actively seeking a solution similar to the one you are proposing.
However, many entrepreneurs make the mistake of using formal online or offline questionnaires for their surveys, which may not provide the most accurate results. Instead, it is recommended that you start with informal one-on-one conversations with your target customers, where they can feel comfortable expressing their opinions. This approach can help you better understand the real problems your customers are facing and how they would like them to be solved.
Make Sure You’re Right
It’s not enough to just identify the problem that your customers are facing, you must also ensure that the proposed solution is viable for them. To achieve this, it’s crucial to validate your problem-solution assumptions with your target customers by asking them what solution they would prefer and be willing to pay for. This will help you determine if your customers would actually use the solution and pay for it.
For example, if you plan to create a co-living hostel for customers who cannot afford to rent their own place, you should validate if your customers would use such a service and how much they would be willing to pay for it.
Finding the Answer
Your resolution to the identified problem is what you offer to customers, which could be a service, product, or a combination of both. It’s important to ensure that what you’re providing meets the expectations of your customers. To do this, you need to create an MVP (minimum viable product) first.
An MVP is a product with essential features that customers find useful and are willing to pay for. For instance, Oyo Rooms, the biggest player in the budget hotel industry, began with just one leased hotel floor. The company’s founders tested the market with this MVP and expanded only after receiving positive feedback from paying customers.
Establishing the Company
After finalizing your MVP, the subsequent step is to create a complete business model that features how you’ll function and generate income. To create a business model, you should utilize a one-page doc often known as a business model canvas, which helps you determine and map out all of the important components of what you are promoting. Does this contain areas akin to
- Who are your clients? What problems do they have?
- What do you propose to be worth? How does it resolve the problem?
- What does every source do for you to function?
- Which media will you use to reach your audience?
- Who are your main friends?
- How do you make money?
Only after you have completed the business model can you give yourself another pat on the back and move on to the following crucial phase, which is establishing your business.
A Few Eye-catching Enterprise Concepts
I do know even this information can typically change into overwhelming, so listed below are some concepts that will help you get begun:
- Uber for X business model: An aggregator business model requires you to act as a middleman between service providers and customers. Uber, for instance, can be used to get groceries, mechanics, and other services.
- Dropshipping is a type of e-commerce business model in which you don’t keep any inventory on hand. Instead, customers order the goods via your website, and a third-party supplier fulfills the orders. Here’s how it works: after a customer places an order on your website, you place a comparable order with AliExpress or another supplier. Subsequently, the third-party provider distributes the product to the customer, and you keep a portion of the money made from the sale of the whole course.
- Dropservicing: Similar to dropshipping, drop servicing is when you develop a service-based business model and contract with a third party to offer the services. For instance, a customer might place a logo design order on your website, and you might then hire a freelancer on Fiverr or Upwork to create the exact design. After reducing your profit margin, you keep the design fee and pay the freelancer for their services.
- Affiliate marketing on the internet involves recommending a service provider’s goods to your audience and earning money when they make a purchase. You should reach out to potential customers using social media platforms, your blog or website, or emails. You receive a cut of the sale as a commission each time a customer clicks on one of your affiliate links and places an order.
- Print-on-demand: Print-on-demand (POD) is a cutting-edge business model that enables you to produce unique products with your own designs while maintaining a low risk of stock and cash. With POD, you can design your products right on the site, select the colors and materials you want to use, and establish your selling price. The POD platform prints and sends your products to customers when they place orders.
The bottom line
Planning and careful thought must go into starting a business. Though concept technology may seem daunting, it’s best to take your time, consider all your options, and pick the one that most appeals to you. When you have a business idea, first determine whether there is a market for it, then create a business plan, and only then should you start investing money in the company.
I hope the material was useful in getting you started on your entrepreneurial journey and that it has eliminated the thought that you have “I want to start a business but don’t have any ideas.” But, if you’re looking for some ground-breaking ideas, Feedough has over 500 company ideas for you.
Tell us what you think!
Did we overlook anything? Let’s go! Please share your thoughts on our post on “I want to start a business, but I don’t have any ideas” in the comments below.
a mentor for startups, digital marketers, travelers, and philanthropists. Aashish has worked with over 20 startups, successfully assisting them with ideation, raising capital, and success. He enjoys climbing, camping, and stargazing when not working.