Editor’s note: This article was first published in January 2013; the figures for BookRenter’s users and staff and the Warby Parker price comparison are from around that time and may have changed since.
The problem many people who want to become entrepreneurs face is that they don’t know what business to start. We are all looking for our own gold mine, and the truth is that sometimes we feel that everything has already been invented and that many businesses are already overexploited.
As Stephen Key explained in an interview with Entrepreneur magazine, to succeed you need a steady stream of ideas. Mr Key has patented 20 products over the last 25 years. The secret of his success is generating a constant stream of business ideas by engaging his mind in different ways, which he explains below.
1. Ask yourself: “What’s next?”
Key says that successful business ideas tend to be ahead of the curve. We have to recognise what the next trend will be. Today both technology and robotics are constantly changing and innovating. If the future lies in home entertainment systems, interactive television or smart systems run from your mobile phone, we can look for ways to join the trend with new innovations. Of course, at other times we don’t need to guess the trend at all; we can be the ones who create it.
2. Think of something that annoys you.
When Colin Barceloux was at university, he thought textbooks cost too much, to the point that many students had serious trouble paying for them. Since nobody was doing anything about it, in 2007 he decided to found Bookrenter.com, a company that rents out textbooks at a 60% discount. What began as one man’s idea born of frustration now has 1.5 million registered users and more than 200 employees. Think about all the things that frustrate you, because there are other people who think the same way you do. Other times, the idea comes from a gap left by big companies that we can end up filling. Put your mind to work on it.
3. Apply your skills to a new field.
Think about how your specific knowledge or skills (what you’re good at) could be adapted to other fields, to other ideas, even to products or services that have nothing to do with your sector or industry. For example, the textile sector has nothing to do with chemical engineering, yet it was a chemist who gave this industry the ideas to create hundreds of garments that are innovative on the market today.
4. Make a cheaper version of an existing product.
Many companies start out by offering an existing product at much lower prices. Some time ago we talked about Warby Parker, a company created by four friends that sells prescription glasses, which cost an average of 300 dollars, for just 95 dollars. We have already told how these entrepreneurs did it.
5. Talk to consumers.
If you’d like to start out as an entrepreneur in a clothing business, or if your passion is mountain bikes, there’s nothing better than standing in the aisles of a shopping centre and asking the people who buy these products what they would like to find that they haven’t found, whether they think it’s cheap or expensive, and whether they would pay more if the product came with a particular extra. If buyers tell you what they want to buy, you’ll have a clearer idea of what you should sell.
That said, sometimes the best businesses come from the silliest, most absurd ideas, and people often make the mistake of looking for something complex when everything can be much simpler. Here we gave an example of 4 business ideas as simple as they are brilliant, and another 4 very simple ideas that bring in 100 million dollars. What’s more, a product doesn’t even have to be good; it’s enough for it to be fun. The worst business ideas can also be profitable. Even so, in the long run, the most profitable businesses turn out to be the ones that come to us when we combine our skills with our passion.
Further reading
- How to turn your passion into a business
- How to know what business to start: steps to find what to do
- 10 tips to encourage your children’s entrepreneurial spirit
Featured image: Alexander Graham Bell, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
