Startup founders don’t talk about it, but one of the worst, most damaging uses of your time as an entrepreneur is dedicating yourself to a good startup idea.
Wait, what? How could a good startup idea be a waste of time?
A good startup idea will show you just enough promise and progress to keep you working on it—often for years. But in that time, you’ll see entrepreneurs that you started out with blow past you because they’re working on their great idea.
That’s why choosing that great idea out of all your pretty good ones is the most important startup decision you’ll ever make. Below are three ways of making sure you avoid the merely good ideas in favor of the great ones.
1. Take time choosing your project
To Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, one of the most important things that you can do as an entrepreneur is explore many different ideas, be flexible, and not be dead set on starting a company without having a great startup idea.
“Explore what you want to do before committing,” Zuckerberg famously told his audience at the 2012 Startup School.
In short, you should optimize—not satisfice—when it comes to choosing your startup idea. Satisficing is a decision-making process where you choose the first option that comes up that’s acceptable, even if it may not be the best, optimal choice.
It’s a great strategy for choosing a dish off of a menu, for example, because it allows you to conserve mental energy and make decisions quickly. The problem is that, for major life decisions, it can leave you stuck with sub-optimal, long-lasting consequences.
On the other hand, optimizing when it comes to startup ideas is tough to carry off because it requires patience. You’ll need to work on a number of different startup ideas before dedicating yourself to one, and you’ll need to say no, even in the face of a good idea.
This will make you feel like you’re stuck at the starting line while your friends have taken an idea, started a real company, and run ahead with it. However, it’s patience that will prepare you to act on your great startup idea when you have it. Zuckerberg worked on a hundred little hacks and cool projects like Facemash, and that led him to an exceptional idea like Facebook. He could dedicate himself fully to Facebook because he hadn’t prematurely committed himself to a good startup idea.
When it comes to a decision as vital to the long-term success of your company as its founding idea, take the time to avoid the merely good startup ideas.
2. Focus on the things you do best
Recently, I was reading about Noah Kagan—founder of SumoMe, former head of marketing at Mint.com, and Facebook employee number 30—when I had an epiphany about how to avoid good startup ideas and focus only on great ideas. Kagan described a problem he had, the solution he came up with, and the extraordinary result he achieved with his solution.
Before SumoMe, Noah started a company called AppSumo in 2010, a daily deal site for software products. He grew AppSumo into a multi-million dollar business, and he did it by being exceptional at just one thing: building an email list. He built an email list of one million plus subscribers that drove 100 percent of his sales.
His “aha! moment” was when he realized that the tactics he used to grow his email list to such outsized proportions would be valuable to every tech startup. Those tactics transformed into products like SumoMe. Now, SumoMe helps its customers reach over 180 million people every month.
Hearing Kagan’s story made me realize the trap that I had fallen into so many times. You shouldn’t make a product out of a problem for which you obtained ordinary results. That’s merely a good idea. Instead, you should choose the problem for which you achieved extraordinary results—that’s where you’ll find your great startup idea.
3. Be 10 times better than the competition
If you want to build a successful startup, heed the advice of legendary investor and entrepreneur Peter Thiel: “You have to be 10 times better than second best.”
To Thiel, if your product isn’t 10 times better than everyone else’s, it will be hard to sell in a crowded market. You won’t be able to differentiate your product from existing solutions, plus customers won’t be willing to pay switching costs unless they’re getting a huge benefit.
As an example, Thiel points out Jeff Bezos’s breakthrough insight with Amazon, and his realization that an online bookstore could offer more selection than any brick and mortar retailer could. His rule is absolutely critical, because in order for your product to be successful, it needs to give your customer superpowers.
The reason this is extremely important is explained in the words of User Onboarding: “People don’t buy products; they buy better versions of themselves.” Your customers want to go from being good at their job, to being amazing at their job. Your tool makes that happen.
For the young entrepreneur just starting out, focus on those times when you have achieved amazing results, and work backwards from there. Think about the times you’ve achieved big success where others have struggled. And be patient. Give yourself time to find that idea, so that when you finally do stumble upon it, you recognize just how great of an idea it truly is.
Photo credit: Lauren Kallen