This is the third ‘Startup Techniques’ blog posting on creating and moving your own Winning Startup Idea into the real world as a fledgling Startup. 

The first posting “Product Development: Creating A Winning Idea For YOUR Startup (Step 1)” included techniques to create your own winning startup idea, and the second “Product Development: Qualifying YOUR Winning Idea For your Startup (Step 2)“ gave some tips on how to qualify the idea to make sure it’s really the one that you should be investing your heart, soul, blood, sweat…well, no need to labor the point, I’m sure you get the idea…

So what do I do next when moving a Winning Startup idea forward?

If the idea has really grabbed me, my temptation is usually to start figuring out all of the pieces that are needed to move it from idea to a real business.  This mean thinking about the people I’ll need to find, figuring out how to test the idea, how much money it’s going to need and the 101 other moving parts.  It starts to expand like one of those towel tablets you would put in the bath as a kid.

It’s at about this time when you need to figure out a few things before you really start getting carried away.

Like what? Well – Normally at the top of my list is how do I fit in with this idea? Sure, I had the initial idea but is that justification enough for driving it forward? Every day, you need to ask yourself, “Am I the best person to drive this business forward?”

What’s important is giving the idea ‘life’ – so always try to keep that at the forefront of your mind and try…(and its tough) to put ego in the back somewhere…

Products and Services tend to have a different approach – For a product let’s consider just a few of the different steps in the process from idea to real, actual product:

• Developing product drawings (Engineering Skills)
• Developing a prototype (Engineering skills)
• Prototype testing (Engineering etc)
• Determining how to produce it in larger quantities (Engineering)
• Testing the Market (Marketing)
• Determining Price Point considering the margins required by the different sales channel (Marketing & sales)
• Sanity checking the numbers (Production costs vs. price point to sales channel) (Finance)
• Understanding and selling the product into the sales channel (Sales)
• Marketing the product to retailers and the end consumer (Marketing)
• Managing the invoicing, customer service, tracking cash (Finance etc)

These are just a few incredibly broad steps on the road to making a product idea real – It’s by no means all inclusive.  The point here is that there are multiple component parts necessary to build a business whether it’s a product, service or website.  When you are sure this idea is the one, begin to map out what the idea needs and to overlay that with your own strengths and capabilities.  This will act as a pointer for you ~ it should help make obvious who you will need to find to join the team either actually or virtually.

One of the common mistakes with most first, second and third times entrepreneurs is not knowing what you shouldn’t be doing – the temptation is often to try to do it all yourself – either to cut costs or because you are so passionate about getting it done, that you take a shot at whatever the task might be, instead of looking for the expert. Your job, oh founder, is to go FIND! Find the people who know what they’re doing in each area (Marketing / Sales / Engineering etc) and if you trust that you have the right people – trust them to do their job properly once you’ve mapped out the objectives / targets.

Thankfully whether your winning startup idea is a product, service or website there are some relatively fixed ‘categories’ that need to be considered whatever the business – product or service.

Here are some of the key categories and a few thought jogging questions, there are many more:

The Customer:

• What are their needs?
• What are they prepared to pay for? How Much?
• How do they buy products like this? A store / website / telephone / television? 

Competition:

• Where do customers currently buy or go to use products like this?
• What products or services do they offer?
• How much do they charge?
• How do they sell and market their products?
• How many competitors are there?

The Product:

• What does it need to do?
• How will it be much better than what the competition offer?
• Who can prototype and build it?
• How much does it cost to produce?
• What is necessary to produce it?
• Who will produce it?

Sales:

• Where will you sell this product?
• Who will sell it for you?
• How will you pay them? Salary or commission or both? Yes, there are sales people who will work for just commission (Blog Post to come)

Marketing:

• How does it meet the customer need?
• How is it better than what the competition offers?
• How much can we reasonably charge?
• Are we looking for volume of customers or a select group of customers?
• What do customers need to know that will make them want to buy it?
• What are the ways to tell potential customers about the product?
• How much do they cost?
• Are there any ways of telling potential customers about the products cheaply?

Some of these questions may not work for your idea but most should.  As you go through them more questions should pop up. And don’t worry if you don’t know all of the answers, you won’t. Fact.

But you will probably be able to make some really good educated guesses in the areas that relate to your personal strengths and won’t have a clue in those areas that are too far out of your own skills and experiences ~ another good pointer towards the types of people you will need to go find to flesh out the idea and really start the tactical planning of “How to Launch Your Winning Startup Idea” and turn it from an idea into an actually, living, breathing Startup. But again, that is the subject of another blog posting.

I hope this posting helps. Again, questions, comments, relevant rude remarks always welcome and ‘Yes’ this posting could have included much more, in fact, it could have gone on for at least another 50,000 words but like most entrepreneurs I have a tendency towards A.D.D. and another 50K words would take a good six weeks or so to write.

Let me know where I should dive deeper and I’ll do my best! Honest!

How did you like this post? Any comments?

Andrew

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Hopefully you read the previous post “Product Development: Creating A Winning Idea for YOUR Startup” and tried one of the following suggestions for coming up with your personal ‘Winning Startup Idea’.

Just as a reminder:

1. Product Design New Application: Think of how one product or design can be re-deployed to solve other problems
2. What If?: How could a great product or business be a ‘world class’ business? How does it need to change or improve?
3. The Pissed Off Brainstorm: If only X did it this way….why couldn’t they just do Y?
4. The mashup approach

Great!  Have you found that idea that makes sleep near impossible?

THE idea that is now starting to bloom and grow in your brain whether you want to think about it or not? 

If you are reading this and even now the idea is demanding attention, then maybe you’ve actually found your own Winning Startup Idea. 

Is that all there is too it?  Of course not. This is just the beginning but it is one of the most challenging elements…

The frank reality is that the idea you’ve just conceived is at the start of it’s life and I can promise you that as you move it forward, it will shift and change to the point where when it becomes ‘real’ you probably won’t even recognize it as the same idea. 

That’s OK.

Every winning startup idea grows up eventually when it hits the real world and spends some time with it’s initial customers. These initial steps are what this post is about  — Initial steps to take a fantastic and very personal winning startup idea and make it real and ready to be shared and experienced by it’s customers.

So here it is, your very own winning startup idea – what’s next?

At this stage, I normally take a look at myself and examine whether I’m passionate enough about the idea to really grab a hold of it with both hands and push it forward no matter what. 

Stop there – Its important you consider if you are SO passionate that you will make it live…No matter what!

Any obstacle, any person telling you you’re crazy, that you may as well not waste your time, that you should stick with the safe life…that it won’t or can’t happen – know that you’ll push through it all and nothing will stop you!

There are always people who will tell you 101 reasons why your idea will fail – some of them people that love you, and don’t want you to fail but perhaps they don’t want things to change, or to risk — some might whisper “Don’t do it – play safe” even as they see your eyes glow, like they haven’t in, perhaps years. 

But this is the time when you need to decide if this is going to be the idea that you’ll make a reality.

If you are only half hearted about it now then sooner or later you’ll run out of steam and waste all the time you’ve invested…You’ll have wasted your own time (forgivable) and other people’s time (unforgivable). 

So this is usually the point where you might decide to sleep on it. YAWN!

So morning comes, the cock crows inside your head and your idea smacks it upside the head and tells it to be quiet while it pounds your resistence into mush…

OK, so you e slept on it and the first thought that pops into your head when you wake up is your winning startup idea…if even while mentally sweeping out the cobwebs of sleep your brain starts to turn over the idea and look at it from different directions, then you are well and truly hooked. Sorry and congratulations – your life may never be the same.

As you mull it over you’ll start to see how it can be made better, how it could be not just a winning idea but Great Idea.  Yippee, this is one of those ideas – one of the one’s that even if you wanted to, you can’t push side.   That mental shot of near caffeine has happened again. Isn’t life great?

So next, write it idea down and I don’t worry if its rough…you’re not going to use this document to raise money…just as a tool to develop the idea and test it out.  As you write, the idea will spiral and burst into rainbowed fragments, it will expand and become bigger and better. After time disappears as you write – you’ll eventually have  it down on paper.

Now wait…. promise to give yourself 24 hours before coming back to it.

But you’ll probably cheat…you can’t help it, a few really interesting elements come to my mind an hour or two later so add them to the document in case so you don’t lose them.  OK.  That’s it. 24 hours. Right.  So next day read it through and see what other refinements or ideas come to mind. 

Yep, the idea still makes sense.

So how do you begin to make it come to life.

Answer: by working with other people.

So who do I know that has expertise relating to this type of business or perhaps know someone who does?  Let’s take the drive through whole food deli idea from the previous post.  Who do I know that has some business experience in restaurants?  Scratching my head the honest answer in my case is ‘no one’. 

Damn it I’m screwed! 

No – hold it – there’s that guy I know who know’s someone…and the ball begins to roll forward…

You’ve run your winning startup idea by someone who understands the space and if you’re lucky, they’ve given you some more ideas, some contacts, told you about potential competitors and if there aren’t any, have probably told you you’re mad. 

Don’t sweat ‘mad’, so was Thomas Edison and Marconi in their early days. These are your early entrepreneurial days, take pride in mad…mad is better than bored and boring watching TV or surfing the internet. Sorry NBC!

If there was chemistry between you and the person who gave you your initial advice, consider cultivating that person as a mentor.  At least ask them if you can give them a call and follow up later. Be appreciative of their experience, let them know that they could be the key to your success – they actually might be. 

If they have helped you identified similar business models or competitors, make it your first business to know everything about them. What do they do, how do they do it, what do they charge and most important, what do their customers think of their product or service? See any chinks in their armor? If so great!  This tells you what you’ll need to do better to start pleasing your customers, making money and building your market.

But one person, a winning startup idea and a rough idea draft is not a business but it IS a great start – so don’t leave it there…

So what’s next?  Well you’re going to need some critical elements and no surprises what they are:

• People
• Money
• Product
• Initial Customers
• Business infrastructure
• Marketing plan / tools
• …and on

But securing those particular elements is material for the next few posts…if you have thoughts, questions, comments or rude remarks about the above, let me know.

And join my mailing list so I can update you when they are more posts and I’ll also send you ‘The Startup Launch BluePrint for FREE’.

Andrew

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I’ve have never tried to get this very personal process down in one place before.  From idea through to a real business step by step with as many of my own personal techniques and suggestions thrown in as we go. 

There are rainforest amounts of books printed about people’s startup experiences – what I’d like to try here is to write about the real techniques and steps I have been through many times before when taking a new business idea and working to move it through to a real product or service. 

Hopefully a more grounded approach than some of those ‘How to’ or ‘My experience as an Entrepreneur’ books.

Well, we’ll see. Questions and comments welcome!

So, want to start a business?

Have the necessary passion to start a new business but are unsure where to start?

Looking for that new, innovative, winning new business idea?

Or perhaps you’re waiting for divine inspiration to serve up that winning idea like money from heaven before you actually get up off that sofa and GO FOR IT. 

Sorry to burst your bubble – waiting on the sofa, won’t make it happen.  The only thing you’ll get is sofa rash!

So how do you get that divine inspiration?

You have to ‘create’ it yourself.  But maybe it’s closer and easier to get than you think, maybe you can come up with that idea today and do you know what else? Even a mediocre idea can grow and develop as you go through the process of thinking, refining, testing and, just like chipping away at a piece of stone – the beauty of what’s inside may get revealed…

Here are a few ways that work for me as a way of getting to that beauty inside – so much so that they’ve become almost unconscious processes that happen on autopilot and better yet, they’re easy.

Give them a try – and leave me your comments and thoughts if they did (or didn’t work…) for you!

When asked where my ideas for new business come from I often joke that it’s a ‘disease’, something which is uncontrolled, being delivered in the grey matter between my ears without conscious thought or a process.  That’s close, but not exactly how it happens.

Let me take you back to give you an insight into the process…

During my first interview for a role at Procter & Gamble fresh out university one interview question still sticks with me.  The interviewer passed a glass across the table and asked me to name ten uses for it.  Use number 1 was…a glass, she was unimpressed.

Use number 2 was a paper weight, (better but still no cigar),

number 3 was a lens to read small print in a document and before I knew what had happened, ten different and increasingly creative (read – crazy) uses had spilled out in the interview room. 

That process is not too dissimilar from the process you could try. This redeployment of one product idea (in my case stackable Pringles) into another product category (Fire Escape Ladders) helped me come up with the idea for my first company, X-IT Products to produce an idea I’d had for the world’s smallest, safest, strongest fire escape ladder.

A refinement on that creative free thinking is what we’ll call ‘What if’.  Find a product, web service or business that is in the space that you are passionate about and really impresses you.  Thought of it? 

What’s great about that business? What do you really like about it?  Now think about what would make it even better? That would take it from being a great business and make it a world class business.  Write down every idea that comes to you….when you feel yourself drying up, read through the list and see if that squeezes any more ideas out of you.  Take a read through that list and see if any light bulbs go off in your head – any really obvious improvements or refinements to that already great business?

The third approach that might work even better for you is what I’ll call the ‘Pissed Off’ brainstorm.  Has a product, service or business failed to live up to it’s promise?  Maybe they over sold you or your expectations were mis-aligned with the reality of the business.  Maybe they screwed up or the product was faulty. Perhaps they don’t exactly meet your need.  But who cares? You do, because this is an opportunity to figure out what the business or product needed to do to deliver on it’s promise, to meet and exceed your expectations.  And if they aren’t meeting your needs because of some flaw, figure out what needs to happen to solve it. 

Let’s try an example, I’m driving from New York to Philadelphia – it’s lunch time and I’m hungry.  Watching the signs as I travel, what are my options?  Ah, here we are – McDonalds, Wendy’s, Dunkin Donuts and a few no-brand obscure Italian restaurants. More often than not if I’m hungry enough, I’ll drive through and buy something.  But just once, wouldn’t it be good if I could get something that was healthier.  It’s true that most of these places sell salads but then the light bulb goes off!  Before Whole Foods selling organic and more ‘wholesome’ food, most supermarkets were similar. Whole Foods changed the supermarket ‘game’ – what about a motor way food joint that changes the game in the same way as Whole Foods?  A quick, drive through that offers freshly prepared, all organic, non-greasy, non-salad food?  As of today, at least on the routes I drive, they would be the only food chain of its type. Talk about cornering an underserved market. Surely not everyone want’s a burger or a slice of pizza? Is this a winning idea? Who know’s but it could make someone a lot of money if it takes off. Don’t forget my percentage if you make this one a reality!

And the last approach for today is the new business mashup approach – remember those business you thought of above? You know – those cool products or services that got your juices flowing?

So what would happen if you could bring a few of them together? Anything interesting there? How about this…take a web based service that really rocks your world and consider how it can be repacked for a growing market. Say – the Twitter community…anything coming through yet?

So, there are other ways that these ideas are created but hopefully these few are good as a start, so:

1. Product Design New Application: Think of how one product or design can be re-deployed to solve other problems
2. What If?: How could a great product or business be a ‘world class’ business? How does it need to change or improve?
3. The Pissed Off Brainstorm: If only X did it this way….why couldn’t they just do Y?
4. The mashup approach

Try these approaches and see where they take you.  Feel free to come back and post how you get on. 

Maybe then I can write an article on some ‘what to do next’ steps for your new winning idea. 

When you find your winning idea then you are already further along than most ‘would be’ entrepreneurs, now to GO an make it a reality.

And if this post takes you to that industry changing idea which makes you bazzillions…remember my cut! Its all started HERE!

And consider joining my mailing list so I can update you when they are more posts even better than this one

Andrew

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