Start-up Ideas: How to Turn a Grain of Sand into a Pearl

Career AdviceWorking Life

The classic start-up dilemma: Brilliant idea, little money. Investors are needed. But they demand more than just a flash of inspiration, no matter how bright it is. You can't blame them. Brilliant start-up ideas are a dime a dozen, but the majority turn out to be soap bubbles within a short time. This is not necessarily because of the start-up idea, but rather because it has to be shaped into a business concept. In this article, you'll learn what to look out for to help a grain of sand mature into a pearl.

Founding start-ups: Pearls are also the symbol for tears

We don't get to hear about the failed start-ups, which account for well over half. Grim statistics make it clear that you should only found a start-up if you are 110 percent convinced of the idea behind it.

The "startupers", most of whom are fresh out of university, make up for their lack of experience with a high degree of initiative, which is sometimes due to the flat hierarchies and profit sharing. The flip side of the coin is non-stop working hours, unpaid overtime - a 9-to-5 job is not - and an always-on mentality. The path to burnout is accompanied by the prayerful repetition of motivational slogans. Preferably with those of Steve Jobs and his holy images and figures.

People who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do.

I'm convinced that about half of what makes the difference between successful and non-successful entrepreneurs is sheer persistence.

If you haven't found it by now, keep looking. Don't give up. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know it when you find it. And like any great relationship, it gets better and better each year.

This entry is not meant to be a deterrent, but to emphasize how much courage it takes to start a startup. And planning. And luck, too.

Finding startup ideas: The search for the pearl

Most of the time, you don't find the pearl. That's why people are often content to modify existing start-up ideas (sometimes slightly). Registering a patent for a start-up idea based on web technologies is hardly possible, if at all.

A good start-up idea could be anywhere. For example, in the unpleasant situation of not being able to get home at night, as in the case of Garret Camp and Travis Kalanick. That's where the idea for Uber is said to have come to them. Or perhaps the pearl is hidden in one of the many Post-it glued creativity enhancement workshops that have spawned an entire industry in recent years, complete with pedagogical method cases and tinkering tips. Allegedly, Einstein discovered his famous formula E=mc² in a dream. Websites like brutkasten and tendingtopics provide inspiration.

Once a brilliant start-up idea has been found, it still needs to be honed into a business concept. Two tools in particular have proven to be useful here.

Optimizing startup ideas: Grinding the Pearl with the Business Model Canvas and Lean Start-up

Business Model Canvas

As part of his dissertation at the University of Lausanne, the Swiss Alexander Osterwalder developed the so-called Business Model Canvas. Today, it is used all over the world, even by large companies such as Adobe, NASA or the WWF. The Business Model Canvas combines nine key factors that need to be considered for the success of a start-up idea. It is designed to help bring the business model into a scalable system and visually complement the business plan to make weaknesses visible.

Lean Start-up

Start-ups today are often associated with Eric Rie's term "Lean". Lean start-up means bringing a beta version of the product to market as quickly as possible. The production cycle is kept very short in order to be able to react quickly to customer feedback. In this process, the start-up idea is constantly optimized, tweaked and refined until it is perfectly tailored to the customer's needs. Lean Start-up thus achieves what large companies do with monitoring techniques, data warehousing or analytics, or feedback instruments on the Web. Since Web 3.0 at the latest, users have been consumers and producers at the same time. They are "prosumers.

But even after the rollout, the pearl still needs to be polished. A good example: A few years ago, StudiVZ was still the website with the widest reach in Germany. The concept behind it seemed mature. But with Facebook, a social network emerged that struck a chord with users through its expanding functions and promptly made it the most used in the world. The StudiVZ story was closed faster than it had begun.

Marketing start-up ideas: The search for investors for the polished pearl

Although the market should be entered as quickly as possible according to the lean start-up principle, it is advisable to proceed step by step for the further course.

The search for investors is much easier if the first market successes can be presented (this also strengthens the basis for negotiations). Focusing on a narrowly addressed target group, so-called early adopters, who are open to new ideas, is much more effective than addressing the whole world at once. After all, you wouldn't put all the pearls in a necklace through the string at the same time.

Conclusion

The secret of how pearls are created in nature has not yet been solved. The fact that a grain of sand penetrated into the shell is responsible for this was only a false assumption. The same applies to a start-up idea. At the beginning, no one can estimate what the product will look like in the end, whether it will even stick. That is decided by the prosumers. In so-called Akoya shells, keshi pearls form completely unplanned as a second pearl. It's probably also the allure of uncertainty that drives "start-ups" - and makes them shy away.

But where would we be today without the tinkerers? Probably still up in the trees. So if your eyes still sparkle, maybe you should start a startup. It's a good idea to keep the Business Model Canvas and Lean Start-up in mind.