Is It Possible To Learn How To Come Up With Successful Startup Ideas? Or Is It A Skill That Not Everyone Has?

One of the most damaging and widespread social beliefs is the idea that most adults are incapable of learning new skills. © Naval Ravikant — AngelList CEO.

Everyone thinks that creativity for starting startups is a gift that someone has, and someone does not. But I have good news for you: coming up with an idea is a skill. The same skill as the ability to pull up, draw or play chess. Everyone can learn this to a different extent: someone will learn to do 10 pull-ups, and someone 100 — it all depends on the efforts made

My name is Rinat. Over the past 4 years, I have started 2 IT startups. Raised a total of $200,000 in private venture investments. Startups have not been successful, but I continue. Now I am successfully developing the 021 development studio — we help startups quickly test hypotheses using NoCode development.

In the last couple of months, I’ve started writing articles, tweeting, communicating more with people, and noticed how many people are looking for that very idea. I decided to share my experience of finding and relating to these very ideas.

I divide the concept of Idea into 2 parts:

• The founder’s vision is the core, the principles underlining the company. This is the main answer of the founder to the question: “What is he doing a startup for?”. The vision is unique and lies deep within the core of the founder’s personality.
• A business model is a way to present the founder’s vision to the world in the form of a business. If vision is a subtle matter, everyone can learn the ability to find new business models. This is a skill that we will talk about today.

You should understand that the quality of your Idea is measured in money: in the capitalization of the company or the profit, it yields. This is a natural way to measure the value and benefit that you bring to this world.

So, now we are in the same context and I will tell you about several ways to find a significant part of an Idea — a business model.

Stay up to date with trends

Pay attention to changes: changes in people’s behavior, technology, and the world around you. This is the only way to find new unresolved problems, opportunities, and areas where there is not much competition.

For example:

• Miro and Zoom have become popular because of the pandemic, the work-from-home trend.
• Clubhouse and podcast streaming services have become successful after a long Bluetooth headphones trend. With these services, it is convenient to listen to something in any circumstances.
• NFT tokens marketplace — Ribble. They saw the trend for the use of NFT tokens and made a sales platform for it.

How I follow trends:

• I explore startups in the USA and Europe that have just raised seed rounds. I find them on twitter and Crunchbase. Try to understand what attracted venture funds to them. If I’m interested in a company, I try to count its economy on my fingers.
• I recently signed up for a trends.vc subscription. The guys write about the current trends in the IT world.
• I follow the opinion of the founders and C-level employees of top companies on Twitter. For example, YC founder Paul Graham or Airbnb founder Brian Chesky. This allows you to learn information firsthand.

Trends are like a headwind. It forgives your mistakes, lack of competence. But do not forget that this wind is constantly changing direction and may even end.

I tweet about trends, make reposts of interesting articles and podcasts.

Socialize more

It is very hard to come up with something new, being in a closed system with yourself. As Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. We need above this problem by taking ourselves up to the next level”.

By finding competent people in different fields, you can learn about how their industry works, find possible flaws, and solve them. Also, discuss your ideas with them, and get feedback.

How do I find new acquaintances:

• Professional foreign communities on Slack and Discord
• Conferences and professional events
• A circle of friends and acquaintances who can introduce you to someone from their social network
• Now I have started writing on Twitter and started a blog, I will be glad to talk and get acquainted with professionals who are looking for ideas :)

As soon as you have a concept idea, you can immediately go and discuss it with potential customers. If the USA or Europe, I actively use the https://www.userinterviews.com service, for $ 45–60 you can find a target respondent for an interview. Or for free, but it takes a long time to search in professional Slack chats.

You can write to me on Twitter and I will send you Slack groups where I found experts to discuss the idea or potential buyers.

Look around

In my mind, the whole world around us is a complex system of many gears that rub closely together: economics and politics, human behavior, and the work of the brain.

The main skill of the founder is to look at this system and see in it what others do not see. To do this, you need to understand at least a little how each of these gears works.

Tips:

• Make reading a regular habit
• Instead of listening to music on the road, listen to podcasts
• Cleanse all your social media feeds of unnecessary content
• Write. For yourself or your blog. When you write, you remember information better and learn to send your messages.

On my Twitter, I share a link to books, articles, podcasts that I found interesting