To start a project, to start anything, you need to have an idea... Ah! But I've always heard that ideas are worthless, what matters is the execution; But among so many ideas, how do you identify, how do you select the one you're going to start first? Try first? Second? How do you identify among so many ideas those that have the greatest probability of something good happening?
1 – Good ideas are strange.
First stage: good ideas tend to be strange at first, and are not immediately well-received. For example, Google's search engine was not the first, nor the second, much less the third or fourth. It was the thirteenth. However, unlike the other twelve previous ones, which used news sites to attract more users to their platform, Google was born with a blank page, with a search field and a button. Didn't it show itself to be different? Well, the difference was precisely that it did not have the common characteristics of all the others. Over time, people began to value this characteristic.
Other examples: renting a property without a guarantor? With a culture in our country that requires a guarantor to rent a property... And then a company called Quinto Andar emerged, and it offered property rentals without the need for a guarantor, and became the largest digital real estate agency in Brazil. Is it considered normal to travel and stay at someone's house, someone you don't know, to use their room, their kitchen? And then the idea of AirBnb came about. Good ideas, great ideas, in their conception, in their beginning, tend to be strange.
2 – Can you stand out in small markets?
Good ideas have the capacity and potential to create a monopoly in very small markets. When you start a project, you can't monopolize large markets because you're just starting out, the beginning of the so-called "big ideas." Instead of worrying about large markets, they seek to establish monopolies in specific markets. In other words, here I make a difference, here I really dominate. For example, Facebook started out like this, as a social network created at Harvard for Harvard for the university public. Then it was extended to other universities, not yet in the public university segment. It created a monopoly on social networks for universities. As it dominated this market, they handed it over to people who weren't from universities, and from there it expanded.
There is a fantastic book that talks about this, about creating a monopoly, which is the book From Zero to One written by the founder of PayPal and today one of the biggest investors in startups in the world.
3 – Is it a growing market?
Many people worry about the size of the market in which my idea is inserted, the size of the market of the fund that will be a potential consumer of my project. As important as the size of the market is identifying how much it is growing. If you can find a product for a large, enormous but stagnant market that is not growing and has no new consumers, these are more difficult situations to operate in because you will have to differentiate yourself in terms of price, you will have to include many attributes in your solution to be different from the others. In other words, it is better to operate in a small market that is growing than in a gigantic market, because a small market that is growing has new customers all the time, there are people wanting to demand your product all the time, and each stage is conquering market share.
4 – Is the time now?
Another key factor is the “time”. The hardest part is identifying the right time to launch a new product on the market. Try asking yourself: why was two years ago too early? Why is two years later too late? Why is the right time now?
If you are faced with several ideas and want to identify one to start implementing, is there a market for it? Does this idea have the potential to become a good product or service? Ask yourself these four questions:
Does your idea seem strange?
Can it monopolize a small market? Yes or no?
Is it part of the growing market?
Is the correct team now? yes or no?
If you answer YES to these four questions, your idea has good market potential and over time it will become a good product, a good service, a good solution.