Is that Holiday Brainstorm Actually a Great Idea?
If your holiday table conversation is like mine, the chat went something like this:
"That's a great idea! You should market that!"
Yeah right, in my free time, you thought.
But now, here you are, post-holidays, wondering if your "great" idea is really great. Here's how to figure it out:
- Do some quick and dirty research to see if your idea already exists somewhere. The now-famed "long tail" of Internet commerce is that there is plenty of room for niche ideas. Figure out the keywords that describe both your idea and its target market. Combine them and search. If nothing's out there...or if what's out there is so awful that you think everyone would abandon the existing offerings and flock to yours, proceed.
- Sign up for a Startup Weekend. It's a traveling start-up incubator, a weekend-long sleepover for new entrepreneurs and those who want to get in on the ground floor of the next great start-up. You sign up, pay a small fee to help cover the costs, and bring your great idea and whatever research and models you've been able to pull together. At the weekend you'll be in a 54-hour lock down with funders, venture capital types, technical types, and operations types. Baby entrepreneurs, meet serial entrepreneurs and experts.
Here's what I like about this: it's both boot camp and reality check. If you're a busy mom (and what mom isn't), and you can't carve out a single weekend to run your big idea through its paces, then you don't believe very much in your big idea. The worst that can happen is that you have fun, learn some new business skills and meet some very cool people...and understand a lot more about how investors vet ideas. The best that can happen is that your idea takes off. Either is better than lumping along, picking at your idea like it's a turkey carcass, and torturing yourself with what-ifs when apparent competitors pass you by.
- Here's the last thing you can do to nurture your idea while you're procrastinating on undecorating the tree and nagging the kids to write thank-you notes: pull on some startup-colored glasses. You;re still in consumer overdrive. Pay attention to marketing pitches and packages that get your attention. Pay even more attention to the ones that get -or just got -- your money. What works? Why? What do these little case studies say about your idea? Start a portfolio of ideas to emulate and ideas to avoid.
Image courtesy of Morguefile contributor seeman.