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Technological advantage does not equal entrepreneurial advantage.

Alpha said: Technology entrepreneurship is becoming more and more a trend, and the threshold is correspondingly improved. What pits do technical bulls encounter when they look for entrepreneurial ideas? How do you find good entrepreneurial ideas and how to make them reliable? In this regard, the Alpha Commune (public number: alphastartups) will work with you in this article to find a feasible idea.

The threshold of technology entrepreneurship is getting higher and higher. The AI ​​unicorns such as Shang Tang, Fu Shi, Cambrian and so on have gathered many technical talents. With the advantage of technology and talents, they have become the leaders of the track. I am eager to try.

CEOs who understand business and technology are still a good founding team, but the founders of many successful technology startups are not only technical but also versatile, and even CEO at the beginning of the venture. The responsibility of the CTO is the high demand placed on entrepreneurs by technology entrepreneurs.

For many tech enthusiasts who are interested in starting a business, technical ability is not a bottleneck. How to find a reliable entrepreneurial idea makes them step on the pit:

The first pit: holding a hammer to find a nail

Starting a business in the field where you can best use your technological advantages is a normal logic, but the hidden pit here is that some technology bulls pay too much attention to technology, and develop products based on technology rather than users (customers). What is satisfied is a false demand that no one pays.

For example, a technology startup company has a good background and a leading technology. It has a good financing in the initial stage due to its technical advantages. However, it is difficult to land after the product is developed, there is not enough revenue, and the business model is not verified and subsequent financing difficulties. Finally, the business failed because of the exhaustion of funds.

Second pit: just want to be the next Google, Facebook

Starting up with Dream Big, you have to find a huge blue ocean market, but that doesn’t mean every entrepreneur has to create the next Google or Facebook. Entrepreneurship is very particular about Timing. These giants seem to have created a new market from scratch, but when they enter, the time is when demand and technology mature to just right.

It’s too early to enter the market and it’s easy to be a stepping stone for others. Running on a track that is too far-off, the probability of success is not high, and the demand may indeed exist, but if other conditions are not mature, it will fail. For example, Yu Jianhong, the founder of Flash, did a project like a rookie wrapped in 2009. As a result, the project failed because the conditions of various aspects (mainly specialization and informationization of personnel division) were not mature. Accumulated this timeAfter the failed experience, he took the opportunity to restart the flash in 2013, but it was not until 2017 and 2018 that the flash actually entered the public eye.

Identify which pits should be avoided, and what methods do technical bulls use to find their own entrepreneurial ideas?

Method 1: Focusing

In fact, no matter whether it is a technology or not, entrepreneurs should look for their own entrepreneurial ideas in a focused way. We assume that there are two areas of entrepreneurship, the number of users in one area is very large, but the demand of users is not strong; the number of users in another area is small, but the needs of users are very urgent. Almost all good entrepreneurial ideas are born in the second field.

The first field seems to have a huge user base, and the “market ceiling” is very high, but the demand is not urgent to represent the user’s availability or not, and the replacement is high, and users and customers will not have a strong willingness to pay. In the second field, users are in urgent need, and it is easier to build a moat. Customers (users) can’t do without it, and they have a strong willingness to pay. The startup company will have the ability to self-hematopoietic.

Of course, the choice of focus does not mean choosing a small market. After the product runs through the model in a focused market, it must have the ability to replicate in the same market. For example, Facebook first ran through the Harvard campus and then expanded to all university campuses and the world. Uber, originally piloted in a city in San Francisco, now has services covering hundreds of countries around the world.

Method 2: Start from yourself

Starting from oneself consists of two parts, the first is to start from their own needs, and the second is to start from their own love. Remind, a startup in education, is typical of its own needs. Brett Kopf, one of the company’s co-founders, was diagnosed with attention deficit disorder during school. His brother David Kopf set up a tool for Brett to remind him. Don’t miss out on all kinds of tests, which really boosts Brett’s school performance. Later, the brothers decided to expand the tool into an entrepreneurial project to solve the communication efficiency problem between students, parents and teachers. At present, Remind has more than 20 million monthly users in the United States, covering more than 50% of public schools in the United States.

The typical example of self-love is GoPro, which was founded by Nick Woodman. Woodman loves surfing. After the first two failed startups, he and his girlfriend surfed.During the trip, he came up with the idea that if there is a camera that can be attached to the wrist, it is good to take a high-quality surf action lens. Initially he realized this idea by developing a custom wristband and working with other small cameras, and GoPro’s first big order was 100 cameras from Japanese sports. Since then, the market for sports cameras has matured and more competitors have come in, but because of the most accurate grasp of demand, GoPro has occupied a leading position in the market for a long time.

After having a few initial entrepreneurial ideas, you should use the following steps to screen out unreliable ideas and make the more reliable ideas more complete.

Step 1: Create a list

This list includes various factors that entrepreneurial ideas should consider, including:

• Who is the customer (user) and what is his needs?

• What is our solution (summary)?

• How big is the market size?

• Why is our solution better than the existing solution? (faster? cheaper? more reliable?)

• Business model. (Who pays, single payment amount, how much is the frequency?)

• Commercialization. (It can be divided into at least three stages: if it is the idea of ​​To C, the stage can be divided into 100 users, 10000 users, 1,000,000 users. If it is To B idea, the stage can be divided into 1 customer, 10 customers, 100 Customers.)

• Future growth. (If the existing problem is successfully solved, what other related problems can be solved?)

Step 2: Eliminate small markets

The first thing that should be removed is the idea that the market is not big enough. It is more efficient to do the following actions:

1. Find the size of your customer base

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You can refer to demographic data, reports from various research institutions, or you can do comparative analysis to study the customer base of similar products.

2. Determine the expected frequency of use

The frequency of use is important because it directly impacts the customer strategy, customer lifetime value, customer churn forecasting and pricing models. An obvious example: a product that users use several times a year is certainly not suitable for monthly subscriptions.

3. Determine the pain level of “pain point”

As mentioned earlier, if the demand for targeting and the “pain point” are not enough pain, then it is not enough to focus, and it is not easy to establish a moat.

4. Determining the willingness of customers to pay

The free model is really helpful for getting customers, but the company needs constant income and cash flow to survive. For start-ups, “making money through advertising” is not a good model, because only large-scale platform-level companies can use advertising models to generate enough revenue and profits, such as Google or Baidu.

Step 3: Eliminate weak business models

The reason why many novel entrepreneurial ideas are dead is because they cannot find a suitable business model. The reliable business model is based on a sufficient understanding of the customer (user), which not only means a large number of market surveys, user experience testing, but also data analysis in the current era.

When determining the business model, fixed costs, customer growth rates, customer acquisition costs, pricing, customer lifetime value, etc. all need to be considered.

In the screening, the business model can be established in three versions: conservative, reasonable and optimistic. In the conservative mode, the customer acquisition cost is set higher, the customer life cycle value is lower, and the customer growth rate is set slower, and vice versa.

If an idea’s business model works in an optimistic version, it’s not “sexy”, but if you can work in a conservative version, it’s relatively reliable.

Step 4: Verify technical feasibility

Technology big cattle are experienced in verifying the technical feasibility. This article will not go into details about the specific process, only highlighting several points related to entrepreneurship:

First, the process of identifying technical feasibility is also a process of verifying whether demand is strong and whether it is “real”. Building products centered on demand is something that should be adhered to at any stage of entrepreneurship.in principle.

Second, in the early stage of the business, we should build a good technical structure. When the startup enters the expansion period, a large number of new users and new data will bring a big impact. When the architecture is not good enough, when upgrading, It will waste a lot of costs.

Third, we should anticipate what types and how many relevant technical talents are needed in each product phase, which is related to the cost of talent and the planning of the team.

Finally, entrepreneurship is a long-term battle. It may cost entrepreneurs at least 4-5 years, so finding a reliable entrepreneurial idea can’t be based on the brain, nor should it be in half a month or a month. Make a decision. The role of reliable entrepreneurial ideas in the success of entrepreneurship is decisive, and it is worthwhile for entrepreneurs to take time to be cautious.

Part of this article is compiled from Medium, the original is the entrepreneur Mona Akmal.