How to Brainstorm Great Business Ideas
Metadata
- Author: Indie Hackers
- Full Title: How to Brainstorm Great Business Ideas
- Category: #articles
- URL: How to Brainstorm Great Business Ideas
Highlights
- Your product is only one part of your business. There are at least four parts in total:
- the problem you're solving and the people who have it (i.e. the market)
- the distribution channels to reach customers
- the monetization model you use to make money
- the solution to the problem (i.e. your product or service) (View Highlight)
- A good problem is one that many people have, otherwise you won't have enough customers. For indie hackers, this number doesn't need to be too big. Usually a few hundred thousand is enough. In some cases, much less. (View Highlight)
- For example, since it's helpful to solve a problem that you have yourself, why not take a look at your own life and see if you can spot any problems. What worries you, exasperates you, or annoys you? (View Highlight)
- Who do you like spending time with? (View Highlight)
- What groups are you a part of? (View Highlight)
- What are some problems you notice people solving frequently? What's something that seems to be growing into a bigger trend? (View Highlight)
- My personal favorite is to start by looking at where people are already spending lots of time and money and go from there. Money changing hands is almost always a sign that there's a valuable problem being solved. (View Highlight)
- Once you have a good problem, you need a distribution strategy. You need an answer to the question, "How am I actually going to reach my customers?" (View Highlight)
(View Highlight)- But the first channel you start with should almost always be direct outreach leading to 1-on-1 conversations with customers, either via the phone or in-person. (View Highlight)
- You'll also be much more persuasive personally than your website will be on its own, and you'll learn crucial lessons from these conversations. (View Highlight)
- You don't have to care about scale when you're trying to go from 0 customers to 1, or 1 customer to 10, or even 10 customers to 100. Don't copy what big companies are doing when you're a small company, or you'll throw away your natural advantages. (View Highlight)
- The one exception here is your monetization model, where you want to do the opposite. Charge more. Indie hackers should not compete on price. That's for huge companies like Amazon. (View Highlight)
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Tags:
- process
Metadata
- Author: Courtland Allen
- Full Title: How to Brainstorm Great Business Ideas
- Category: #articles
- URL: How to Brainstorm Great Business Ideas
Highlights
- • the problem you're solving and the people who have it (i.e. the market)
• the distribution channels to reach customers
• the monetization model you use to make money
• the solution to the problem (i.e. your product or service) (View Highlight) - For indie hackers, this number doesn't need to be too big. Usually a few hundred thousand is enough. In some cases, much less. (View Highlight)
- why not take a look at your own life and see if you can spot any problems. What worries you, exasperates you, or annoys you? (View Highlight)
- Who do you like spending time with? What groups are you a part of? What are some problems you notice people solving frequently? What's something that seems to be growing into a bigger trend? (View Highlight)
- My personal favorite is to start by looking at where people are already spending lots of time and money and go from there. Money changing hands is almost always a sign that there's a valuable problem being solved. (View Highlight)
- Too many founders are struggling to solve unsolved problems, not realizing that they're often unsolved because they're unimportant and people don't care. (View Highlight)
- Not having a specific customer in mind. If you can't articulate whose problem you're solving, how is your website going to articulate it? If you want to wait and see who the best customer turns out to be, that sounds a lot like a key looking for a lock. (View Highlight)
New highlights added October 31, 2024 at 6:37 PM
- Don't just copy what competitors are doing. Yes, I advised you to pick a straightforward, proven problem. But don't default to that with your solution. (View Highlight)