Having a good business idea can make or break your company. I've worked on a couple of ideas which honestly weren't best suited for me.

But note: Business ideas generally are overrated. Many people think they can't start a business without having the perfect idea. This is bs. Most ideas aren't perfect in the beginning. Youtube started as a dating site. It's more important to start with an imperfect idea and keep iterating until it really works. You can even start a business without an idea! Which just means you're first gonna brainstorm on new ideas!

Also, many people are working on the same ideas. At the end, it matters more how you execute the idea.

5% is the idea, 95% execution. Daniel Ek, founder of Spotify.

How to Generate Business Ideas

There are many methods to get new business ideas. One which I enjoy most — especially when working in a team — is design thinking, which originated at Stanford.

Design thinking is composed of 5 steps — we're only looking at the ideation step here. Check out the other steps on this PDF from Stanford.

I learned a lot about design thinking and ideation from my dear partner Gianna Lippuner, who used to lead ideation workshops.

You’ll need:

• A whiteboard app like Miro if you're doing it online

• Post-Its if you're doing it IRL

• 1-2 hrs.

With this method, you generate many ideas in a short time — and it's super easy and a lot of fun!

1. Define a clear goal or challenge. The narrower, the easier it is. For instance:
   “Find an idea for an app which helps people in their 30s being less lonely.”
   Having a good and clear challenge is really crucial for making the process smooth!

2. For groups (skip if solo): Do a short warm up exercise to get your brain started, e.g. the I have problem warm up:
   Person A comes up with a problem: ‘I have a problem. I want to vape."
   Person B comes up with a random, disconnected tool to solve it: ‘Got you covered! Here's a sloth.'
   Person A now uses the tool to solve the problem: ‘Perfect. I'll send the sloth to the kiosk right away, so that it can buy me the latest vape.’

3. Brainstorm broadly: Generate as many ideas as possible in 5 minutes. No constraints: money, effort, time, all is irrelevant at this stage.

4. Do another warm up. E.g. How can you make a lemon fly? Fold a paper 3 times and draw 8 ways to make it fly. 4 minutes.

5. Brainstorm for 5 more minutes.

6. Everyone selects their top 5 ideas.

7. Build clusters: Set titles to idea groups and arrange the post-its accordingly. Explain every idea which isn't clear to the others

8. Remove every idea which isn't:

   1. Desirable: You doubt there's a real need for that idea

   2. Feasible: The idea seems too hard to implement

   3. Viable: You can't really make money with it

   4. Note that this is a very general rating system. In the next edition I'm gonna share my framework for rating ideas.

9. Vote and decide: Everyone gets 3 votes. Decide which idea you want to pursue!

10. Visualize it: You can draw it, do a role play, map it on the whiteboard.

11. Future questions: Ask:

    1. How can our project look like in 5 years?

    2. What needs to happen to make us successful?

    3. Potential accelerators, potential obstacles?

    4. What if we're really successful? If this project goes through the roof?

I hope you found a cool idea! If not, here are a couple of other ways to find an idea:

• Start with a problem you've personally encountered — in a job, or just general

• Talk to potential customers and ask what problems they have

• Look for things in the world that have changed recently

• Look for new variants of successful companies

• Look for successful startups in other countries and copy them in your country

• Look for industries that seem broken — then talk to the people in these industries to find out what problems they have

I'm sure you're gonna come up with a couple of great business ideas, enjoy!

Your task for now:

1. Block a 2-hour slot in your calendar & do the method described above. If you're working with a team, feel free to ping me – happy to share my ideation slides with you (which apply the method above).

2. Subscribe to this newsletter so that you don't miss the next episode — where we'll dive deeper into how we can rate and compare the ideas to find out which ones are worth a shot!

All the best. I hope you have fun creating many cool ideas!

Michael

P.S.: If there's any question related to a business idea, just drop me a line. Happy to help.