Initial Research
Without revealing too much about my idea I was preparing myself for the weekend and went online to find a website to best fulfill my needs. I noticed that what I was looking for couldn’t be found. I assumed that this meant the site I want does not exist, and I hoped that if I wanted this site to exist, then others would too. This made me believe this idea had lots of business potential. I immediately got to planning and researching. I first looked to verify that this business did not exist elsewhere, and that there were no previously failed businesses who had attempted this model. Thankfully there were not. Then I went about looking for businesses that are similar to my idea. I spent some time researching their business models to identify exactly how they make money and how successful they are. I checked the prices they placed their services/products and I used Similarweb.com to see their annual traffic/revenue. I inspected their websites extensively to see how they market their products and services as well as what kinds of deals they provide. I then checked the overall market that surrounds my idea and confirmed if there was or wasn’t a need. I looked at Reddit forums to see if others were asking for what I believed I could provide and googled the statistics of similar companies to verify if the industry was growing or declining and by how much.
Preparing For Failure
While doing this research I began listening to the audiobook, “Originals” by Adam Grant (very motivating book for entrepreneurs). In this book Adam demonstrates that it’s often not the first person to develop a product or business that has the most success, but it’s the second or third person to follow that has the most success. This occurs because the people following the innovator have the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of the innovator, they can see what people like, what they didn’t, and optimize their business accordingly. Also, Both Chris Guillebeau and Adam Grant mention identifying potential complaints ahead of time people may have with your business and learning how to address those issues. Inspired by this suggestion I decided to spend some research identifying common complaints people have with the current system, as well as identifying what people like most about them: That way I could keep the good and optimize the bad. I checked Reddit and Quora forums for complaints regarding the current model and similar sites. I learned that the most common complaints and began brainstorming solutions that I could provide within my services in order to better stand out amongst the rest. Once I got several ideas worked out for what my business model would look like, I started spending some time thinking about what my next steps to start the business would be. It felt though that the more I planned the more helpless I became. I started strategizing marketing, web design, app design, sales pitching, etc and realized quickly I knew none of that. I couldn’t think of any real steps to take. I felt that I could not do this alone. Almost every business startup that I know of involved a team so…. I decided to form my own small, but powerful team.
