What are your frameworks for new business ideas?
I know of a few ways to come up with business ideas:
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Market-first - Pick a market you like and build products for that market.
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Audience-first - Pick an audience or group of people, and build products for them.
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Problem-first - See problems around you, and build a product that solves one of those problems.
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Theme-first / Trend-first - See a trend/theme developing and build a product from that (e.g. Blockchain product, AI something).
Any other frameworks you might use?
I always build a marketing system first, then build a product to fit the marketing.
I like that. It's almost an extension of audience-first. Pick an audience, work out how to get to them and go from there.
What's a pre-launch marketing system for something like Salon Monster look like?
To be honest, that was the one time I didn't do that and it was slow to get that business going. What we should have done was found a way to connect with hair stylists and hair salon owners and built an audience first.
Ideals first - Decide the overall ideals that you want to strive towards, at a higher more abstract level, then drill down to one of the other frameworks as needed.
For example, my overarching ideal is that I want more people to work independently. Independence is a spectrum but generally by that I mean independent from an employer. My reasons for believing in this are many and varied, but it helps me a great deal when I drill down into more concrete and specific decisions. It lets me step back when I'm unsure and recalibrate my perspective.
I also think it's better to look outside of yourself if you're going to take this approach, and let the personal rewards be natural side effects of accomplishing your goals. Making your ideal "I want to be rich" probably won't work very well, but in my example, building and selling tools for independent workers will probably provide me with revenue as a side effect.
This is cool. I hadn't thought of something like that before. thumbs up
Founder/Market fit - Align who you are with a group of people you like being around.
Nice, I love this one. I was just about to suggest one called:
Me-First - Align with what I enjoy doing, solve a problem in a market I like and understand.
Nice. This is basically what I meant with audience-first approach.