Ideas are a dime a dozen, As Marc Randolph (Co-founder of Netflix), points out in the tweet below:
Throughout human history, people have come up with extraordinary ideas, and some horrible ones as well. It is the ones that followed through and executed those (good) ideas that are the “heroes” who have brought humankind to this point, usually amassing a large fortune along the way. Luckily, for modern-day entrepreneurs, testing out your ideas in real-time is easier, faster, and cheaper than ever before.
The internet has democratized and opened the floodgates for anyone with an idea and a hint of ambition. All of the tools and information you need are available to you for free, or for a few bucks.
But before you quit your day job and start pouring money into your idea, ask yourself, have you identified an actual problem or need in a particular market? Just because you are convinced your idea is the next Uber for dogs, it’s a good idea to see how others respond to your potential unicorn.
Start by conducting market research to determine the feasibility of your idea and identify your target customer base.
If the market research has led you to understand that there is a need or demand in the market for this, great!
Time to start building your MVP (minimum viable product):
Don’t get obsessed with perfection!
Yes, I said it.
You’ve heard it before, perfection is the enemy of progress. Do NOT, I repeat, DO NOT seek it. If you google some of the biggest companies in existence today and see how they started, you’ll get it.
Their logo sucked, the UX was horrible, and they had 1% of the features they offer today.
I’m not saying that you should release something shitty, all I’m saying is don’t let your pursuit of perfection stop you from launching your first iteration. Once you launch, use customer feedback and improve your product based on conversations with them.
Before you launch, make sure to build a waitlist, and get people to sign up. A lot of people signing up pre-launch is a solid metric of “people want this” i.e., demand.
The other more important metric, which you will have to prove once you launch, is “will users pay for this”- cause at the end of the day, profitability is 👑 .
But what if I’m not “techy”?
Everything you need in order to create your MVP is readily available; you do not need to have technical abilities (although it really helps) to start a tech venture. I’m not gonna lie, being fluent in tech helps, and it cuts the time you need to create. However, it does not determine whether you can build or not.
Depending on what you’re building, your tech stack will vary wildly, but generally, you can start with some combination of the tools below.
Fiverr - Find developers/freelancers
Shopify or Bubble or Squarespace or WordPress - Websites
Slack - Team communication
Testimonials - Testimonials
Google Domains - Buy domains
Triple Whale - Data
Jasper.AI - AI content writer
Figma - Design
Canva - All your design needs
Carrd - Landing page
Shopify - Merchant store + dropshipping
Notion - Operations, back-end work
These are a very small sample size of a few generally used services that can help you create any sort of online product. There are thousands of SAAS products aimed at helping solopreneurs, creators, and entrepreneurs launch, run and manage anything else you may need.
Additionally, there are endless AI tools available and emerging every day, that will automate so many creative tasks that were unthinkable just a year ago.
Check out this website for all the latest AI tools - Theres an AI for that
So, if you have an idea that you think has legs, but you’ve been too scared to test it out, why are you still reading this?
Go!
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