People reach out to me and they ask, “is this a good business idea?” If you’ve never been in business before, you might not understand how ridiculous that question is. The idea that I would know anything about your business is just silly because I don’t know anything about your market.
My friend recently had an idea for an app where you could buy a monthly subscription for a given industry. Then, you’d be able to go to many different providers in that industry. First off, I think the idea sounds great, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea or not. An idea is just motivation to start investigating your market.
A business is a series of systems that provides a solution to a painful problem. If we look at an app, it’s a tool to distribute this solution. An app is a silly way to test an idea because it’s very expensive. A better way is to see if there’s demand for what we offer and if we can supply it.
The first thing we could do is just ask friends if they would pay for your idea, and if they say yes, you ask if they’d be willing to write you a check if you could get it done right now. Don’t cash the checks yet. Then, we could walk into businesses in the industry and tell them how many people you have willing to pay to use the provider. Next, we could ask for a discount from the provider if we send them a certain amount of business.
If they say no, we have to rework our business model. If they say yes, you have two sides of the equation. You have customers who are willing to pay, and businesses who are willing to provide services. Now you have a business, but it’s still too early for an app. We need processes for attracting more people to the business.
You should first build your business in just one city. Once you have a business up and running at a certain size, then you can think about expansion. At this size, you might need a better distribution system, and that’s where an app could help.
If we start with an app, we’ll be dealing with development issues and bugs in the app. These are not the core problems of a business. The first step in business is to prove that you have a solution to a problem.
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