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You are here because you have an idea. And every idea can make money if it solves a problem. It need not be the next Facebook or Google. It can be something as simple as a water bottle or a safety pin. But it should do that one thing like no one else does it: Solve a problem. I founded Thinker about two months ago and I wanna share my learning on how I took it from an Idea to my first sale.
1. Look inward and then Outward
It was one gloomy monsoon day when I sat scratching my head on how to bring a nail-biting twist to a film plot I was working on. My ideas were too hazy and all over the place for me to make any sense of them. I needed a tool to rapidly dump ideas and then filter them out until they made sense to me. A quick Google search on “Brainstorming tools” showed me products that laughed at my bank balance. I now had a problem at hand, and It needed a solution. And the solution was Thinker.
So before you go inventing a pen that is writable on Mars, look around you. Find a problem you face in your daily life. I promise you if it is a problem that you would “pay to kill”, there are many like you who would love to get rid of that exact problem from their lives as well.
2. Rapid Ideation and Brainstorming
Once you identify the problem you intend to solve you do these three things:
Brainstorm Freely: Encourage free-flowing ideas without judgment. Use techniques like mind mapping, sketching, or sticky notes to visualize thoughts.
Set time limits: Usually, deadlines encourage quick thinking and prevent over-analysis. It is ideally best to keep a brainstorming session between 30 minutes to an hour tops.
Cluster and Prioritize Ideas: group similar ideas together. Evaluate and prioritize them based on criteria like feasibility, impact, and alignment with your goals.
3. Fail Fast than Succeed Never
On the contrary to what a perfectionist would say, your half-baked cake will fill a hungry stomach. If you ever hear yourself saying “ No this needs to be tweaked or I need to make it perfect before launching it ” then remember, that's your ego talking as it is scared of failure. You can’t keep on building features before knowing where your product fits in the market. You can’t keep waiting for the next big idea.
So what you have to do is launch what is called a Minimal Viable Product (Read more from Ycombinator: A Minimum Viable Product Is Not a Product, It's a Process). It is those features that you can build within 1 month that will set your product aside from others in the market. For a service-based company, say a restaurant, think of those 5 dishes that everyone in town will talk about and then hit the market.
4. Iterate or Pivot
If you have successfully launched your MVP, then within a month you should have an idea of where your product stands in the market. Even if you find just one customer who is willing to pay for your product (Other than your friends and family of course) then you have a business and you put your head down and iterate on it.
If not, unfortunately, you have to let go of the idea. Glinthe was one such idea for me. After a month of Development when I went to the market with it, the result was disheartening. So I had to let go of the idea. Some Ideas are that, they are either plain bad, or people are not ready for it yet and in the latter’s case, you can always come back to it.
To sell, you first have to create
I'm pretty sure most of you don’t have a problem with Ideating. It's the launch that keeps you tied down. Remember to cut yourself some slack, fail happily but learn from them, and keep trying until that one hay turns out to be the needle you have been looking for all this while. Never let your entrepreneurial hunger die.
I hope you are now confident about how to sell your idea. If you ever want to bounce your ideas with me, you know where to find me!
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