You might be sitting there and feeling like you can’t be an entrepreneur without an idea.
Well, that’s just not true.
If you are looking to be an entrepreneur, and want to start your own business but don’t have an idea, you should get excited. You have a chance to get started off on the right foot.
The biggest problem that first time entrepreneurs make is they have this great idea one night in bed, they write it in their notes app and shortly after they decide to go out and start coding an app, hiring freelancers, and trying to look for fundraising to build this incredible idea of theirs.
Now the issue with that is they end up building a solution in search of a problem.
Think about that again; they build a solution in search of a problem.
If you want the best chance at a truly successful business (that has users kicking your door down to use it), you are going to want to make sure that it solves a problem.
So, the benefit you have at this stage (without an idea) is it allows you to not have that bias towards your initial idea, and to make sure that you start off problem-focused, and not solution oriented.
So how exactly do you become an entrepreneur without an idea?
Well, we’re gonna start with figuring out a problem to solve.
You can go about this in a few ways.
Firstly, you can try to think about problems in your own life.
What are you experiencing on a day-to-day basis? What do you do for your full-time job? Are you a student? What do you eat? Do you work out? What hobbies do you have?
Think about problems you experience during these scenarios. List out these problems. Don’t sell yourself short, write down everything that comes to mind.
Now ask yourself how you’re currently solving these problems or how these problems are currently being solved, and are those solutions good enough?
It is highly likely that your brain is going to start ideating at this point. It’s going to try and think of different ideas to solve the problems that you are writing down.
Don’t let it. Remember, you want to know how to become an entrepreneur without an idea…yet.
If nothing comes up during this brainstorming session, do not worry. There is another way to go about this.
Try and think about problems that do not directly affect you, but you are aware about.
This could be a global issue, something your family or friends have mentioned, or something a coworker complains about.
A great example of this is the story of the Y-Combinator online vet supply company Vetcove. Both of the co-founders were not veterinarians.
The way they came across this idea was by hearing their father, who was a veterinarian, ordering drugs and supplies over the phone and not online.
They saw how inefficient the process was and how much time it took out of his day.
Without knowing it, they were entrepreneurs without an idea. By being observant, they noticed a problem and began asking their Dad questions about it.
They quickly realized he was not the only vet experiencing this, and set out to solve it. They ended up creating Vetcove, an online vet supplier.
As a side note, throughout this process, you don’t have to choose things that you’re passionate about or an expert on. But it does help to choose things that you have an interest in because it will be very easy to quit down the line when the going gets hard.
For example, one of the greatest entrepreneurs of the past century, James Dyson, invented the bagless vacuum cleaner.
In no way is someone passionate about vacuums, and James Dyson certainly wasn’t one of them.
He was passionate about solving problems with everyday products and designing beautiful solutions.
That passion for solving problems with everyday products and his deep love for design allowed him to persist through 5,127 prototypes over 14 years before he began finding success.
If you start off with an idea before understanding the problem, AND are not deeply passionate about solving that specific problem, then you will not make it to prototype #2.
Once you define a problem that you want to start working towards you are ready to move onto the next step.
That next step is around validation. You will be digging into who you are solving the problem for, where to find them, and how to get the validation you need to begin ideating and building an MVP.
For the exact step-by-step process on how to do that check out this article here as well as this article for the MVP process.
For now, you can feel comfort in knowing you learned how to be an entrepreneur without an idea, but with a problem!
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Keep growing,
Eyal and Yoav
