How to Find Creative Startup Ideas
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| Photo by Mario Gogh on Unsplash |
Either the idea is just copied and not creative or the potential founders are forever looking for the ultimate idea and therefore don't even start.
In this article, I would like to give tips on how to find good and creative ideas for startups and what to look out for.
Find Creative Startup Ideas
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| How to Find Creative Startup Ideas |
The general question that arises at first is the following: Why should you have a creative idea at all if you startup alone or in a team?
If you are self-employed on the Internet, it is no longer so easy to start something new. There are tons of websites and services out there, and many are added every day.
Anyone who wants to be successful online should not only deliver quality but also operate search engine optimization and be active on the social web. Your internet project should be something special and different from the existing “competitors”.
As described in the textbook Blue Oceans, it often makes more sense to develop a business idea that has not yet existed and is, therefore (for the time being) without competition. This is often much better than competing against the established competition (Red Oceans), whose lead is difficult to catch up with.
Customers then have to be advertised with the help of marketing and pricing policy, since the idea and thus the service/offer is almost the same. That will be expensive.
That's why quite a few people interested in starting a business ask whether it is still possible to implement a creative idea as an Internet project. Everything is already there.
Revolution or Evolution?
I do not think so. Of course, there are a ton of websites and services out there, and the number is increasing every day. But apart from the fact that new topics always arise, the principle of creative ideas lies primarily in doing something differently than before and thus something new.
How creative do the ideas have to be?
I know a lot of potential founders who just don't get started because they are looking for the “egg of Columbus”. It has to be a revolution, something unprecedented that dwarfs everything that has gone before.
But in my opinion, this is the completely wrong approach, and for some reason.
For one thing, there are very seldom real revolutions. Most business ideas are an evolution. What is known is improved, further developed, or combined.
YouTube wasn't the first video portal on the web, but the founders have developed it and made it better.
MailChimp wasn't the first newsletter service on the web, but it was made more modern and accessible. Amazon wasn't the first online book store, but it got faster, bigger, and more social.
The list goes on and on. I can't think of a currently successful startup that really did something completely new and never existed before.
“Self-employed on the Net” was not the first German specialist blog, nor was it the first about self-employment and the Internet. But the combination, the detail of the articles, and the perseverance over the years have ensured that my blog has become quite successful in this niche.
Developing business ideas according to the principles of evolution has other advantages:
- You can fall back on existing technologies, frameworks, CMS, etc., and do not have to develop everything from scratch.
- This is reflected in lower costs, which you as a founder are more likely to meet.
- This also reduces the effort involved, so that you can often implement such business ideas on your own.
- Last but not least, it is also an advantage of this approach that you can start faster and present something to the target group more quickly.
So I recommend making an existing offer better and/or offering a combination of existing services and offers.
Don't Look for Ideas, But Solutions
Another mistake founders keep making is focusing too much on the idea and waiting for a flash of inspiration.
A much better approach is to look for a target group and look at their worries, needs, and wants. The best business ideas are based on problems and have offered solutions.
The advantage of this approach is that you can be sure that there is a target group for the offered solution and that these people are probably willing to spend money on it.
However, there is no guarantee for the latter, so you should check in advance or very early on when implementing the idea whether enough people are willing to spend money on it.
Inspiration
Another way to come up with startup ideas is through inspiration. There are a large number of portals on the web that deal with startups and founding ideas.
For example, on gruenderszene.de you can find a database with thousands of startups. This database can be searched and there is further information on every startup.
Under seedtable.com to find startups from around the world. You can get information and look at descriptions of the startups in different categories.
A similar site is 500.co. Interesting online startups are also presented there, but only very briefly. If you want to know more, you have to take a closer look at the linked startup.
Know-How and Motivation
In general, you should also incorporate your know-how and motivation when generating ideas for a startup.
It doesn't help much if you find a startup idea that is great in itself, but you don't have the know-how to implement it yourself, and/or you don't enjoy the topic.
Ideally, you bring your interests and skills in line with the idea.
You can work in a team and therefore you do not need to have all the know-how that is necessary for a certain startup idea, but on the one hand, not everyone wants to work in a team, and on the other hand, you should at least understand something of all aspects to have an overview.
Conclusion
There are different ways to come up with business ideas for a new startup or your self-employment. You should always keep the target group and your skills and interests in mind.
In the end, I would like to point out that an idea alone is not worth much. Even the best idea only becomes tangible through implementation and only then has real value.
How to best implement such ideas and what to look out for will be covered in another article soon.
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