Aditya Kothadiya's Blog

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Few days ago, I was having some interesting conversation with my friend about two most important aspects of a startup – the idea and the team.

I shared few opinions of mine with him that I learned during my tiny attempts of starting a startup. Here I'm sharing those again with you -

Innovating Ideas for a Startup is not Easy

They say that there is no shortage of ideas to start a startup. I think it's a misleading statement. Yes, I agree that there seems to be tons of ideas – but those ideas are like – fix some broken thing in an existing idea, or improve some aspect of an existing idea, or simply self-generate some fancy ideas. There might not be shortage of such ideas. But can we really build a profitable business or a viable company based on such ideas? I think it's better to call such ideas as side-projects rather than startups or companies.

That's why I think that there is a shortage of ideas – ideas which are truly innovative, which are truly business oriented, or which has potential to build a viable company. Very few people come up with such innovative ideas, and I feel envy of them.

I'm personally facing this issue and observing similar trends in this Web2.0 world as well. I met a guy in Startup School few months ago, and he discussed his idea with me. He said he owns a domain name, which I think was really crappy, and he was trying to cook a crappy idea around that domain name. On top of that, he said he is a business development guy and looking for a hacker to work on that idea to start a startup. This is so pathetically wrong!

Ideas are not generated like this. I don't think we can build business like this. They are good ideas for side-projects. I've done such mistakes. But I think that's a wrong approach.

I think it's very important to do thorough brainstorming sessions with like minded people when we want to cook an idea for a startup. Such team should discuss as many critical problems that they are facing as possible. They should come up with as many innovative and compelling solutions as possible for each problem. They should discuss in detail how big is the market opportunity for each solution; what are the potential business models for each solution, etc.

And then pick the most promising idea that all the members from team think is the next big idea for starting a business. And then start working on it. This can be a time-consuming and lengthy process. But we can't just come up with an idea to build a viable business in overnight, can we?

This idea generation approach doesn't guarantee that it will be a successful business. I think it's reasonable if ideas generated through this approach fail. There are numerous factors why startups fail. But I think this approach at least increases the probability of having all team members passionate about a particular idea, and hence the probability of success.

First Team, Then Idea

The above approach brings up an interesting question – to have a team first and then decide the idea Vs to have a idea first and then build the team.

I personally think the best approach is – to have a team first, and then brainstorm on numbers of ideas, and then pick the most promising one.

What's wrong with the “First Idea, Then Team” approach?

I think if we come up with an idea first and then try to convince other entrepreneurial people to join us as a co-founder, then it's really hard to get him on the board, mainly for 2 reasons -

1. He feels that he is joining us and not starting with us. He doesn't see the sense of achievement or ownership in this business. It's a human psychology, stupid though.
2. Since he is also of entrepreneurial traits, it's very likely that he will also have his own idea that he wants to start. So he might not find our idea better than his because he has lots of prejudiced thoughts about his idea. And it's not easy to erase those prejudiced thoughts. So it becomes harder in this situation as well.

I'm personally facing this issue, and seeing it's very hard to bring someone on the team. I'm also seeing the issue from other side of the table, where I'm having an option of joining someone else's team while I'm working on my own idea.

What's right with the “First Team, Then Idea” approach?

When we are first building a team, and then deciding the idea, then things becomes way promising. Since we all are brainstorming on lots of different ideas and are criticizing each other ideas, the session results into awesome ideas and compelling solutions that we as a individual couldn't have thought about. Then coming up with the most promising idea, and working together on it makes it very likely that everybody in the team will have equal passion for that idea and will put their best to make it successful. This can be very critical aspect while building a viable business.

What do you think? What experiences you had when you started alone vs you started with a team? Which approach do you think is better? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Related articles from this blog:
The Foresee (Four ‘C’) Theory!
Are You In Rush To Start A Startup?