How do I approach a business with an idea?

I've done this in the past. I find the best way is to do it in person. I made a habit of walking on my downtown street between lunch and asking the local business owners about their challenges of their business. I don't know if there's a number...I think idea extraction should become a part of your daily routine. Here are some questions you can ask: So your business does X? What is your role in the business? What does a typical day look like for you? Can you walk me through the first couple hours of your day? What are the first few things you do each morning? How many customers are you working with a month right now? What’s been your best month? What’s been your worst? What are a couple activities you have in your day that you just don’t enjoy? Getting Deeper Thinking about the last couple days at work, what has been the most challenging part? What do you use excel for in your business?** What is the most expensive problem in your business? What’s a problem that you’ve tried to solve in the past but didn’t work for you? What would you like to do with you mobile phone, but can’t?

Trust me ..It is a blood bath... Sites like freelancer have already capitalized the labor arbitrage business model.. I joined 2 groups but lacked motivation when it The only way it would work is 1) Get higher in value chain - Management consulting , roadmaps etc. The labor arbitrage still works there .. 2) Cutting edge and non-commodity services like IoT, Cloud, Hardware 3) Niche technology like NLP (natural language processing), Machine Learning, Computer Vision etc.. Please don't start another website development company using PHP , net .. The world do not need one more.. You still want to start, better have a behance portfolio that is killer quality .. QUALITY IS NEVER CHEAP !!! Need help in exploring option, feel free to place a call.. and if can'tr afford $, let me know.. will arrange a 30 free call..

You've been doing all the right things, so you're on the right track. Not sure what you mean by, "launch the idea" though. You can't start selling it until you have an MVP (Minimum viable product), and it doesn't sound like you do. Your next steps are to make an MVP and deploy it to people with the appropriate personas you identified in your previous user research. Your MVP, and defined personas will most likely be iterated as you do subsequent testing, that's normal. In order to get people to test out your MVP you don't necessarily need a website or promotional video, but they may help in the recruitment of testers if needed. Nobody other than the people you solicit as testers are going to see the website, so don't worry about that. You don't have to be very secretive, but if you want to be cautious, you can ask if anyone wants to test your MVP (on forums, etc.), and describe it in general terms (i.e. just describe the problem it solves, and maybe generally how). Then for all the people that are interested you can give them the details and show them the device (or whatever it is) and see if they're still interested. You should have all your solicited testers fill out pre- and post- questionnaires which will help you quantify optimal personas, the functionality of your product, approximate price people might pay for it, etc. I've done many of these myself, and also helped lots of other people design them, analyze the results, and iterate their MVP based on the results. Let me know if you'd like any help, or if you have any questions relative to the specifics of your product. best of luck, Lee

I'd suggest doing three things to narrow down the field: 1.Try to sketch the business model for the startup idea http://businessmodelgeneration.com/canvas 2.Get good at doing quick and dirty market sizing of opportunities 3.Check if you are passionate enough about the idea to potentially spend the next 5-8 years of your life in making it successful Based on a collective evaluation of the above three, you might be able to zero in on a few ideas to investigate further (e.g. building a prototype, customer development, etc.)

These are some great questions. As an entrepreneur, growing and scaling my business has been both a challenging and rewarding task. I'll answer both your questions separately: 1. How should you decide which business idea to pursue? Your decision should take into account both personal factors and should have regard to your environment, your market and your resources. From a personal perspective, choose an industry which (1) you are passionate about and (2) you have knowledge/experience in. This will considerably reduce your risk of failure. As a startup founder, you will find your job to be extremely challenging and the only way to succeed is through resilience. If you are not passionate, you will easily give up. Having the knowledge and expertise of your industry will not only give you more gravitas but also save you lots of time in research and understanding the wants and needs of your customer. From a larger perspective - ensure your business solves a problem that is large enough to build a profitable business out of. Here is a non-exhaustive list of questions to help you get there: 1. What is your intended customer base? It is harder to target a broad and general audience - try to establish a niche customer base which needs your products and/or services. 2. What problem does your service/product solve? Identifying a problem and providing a solution is the heart of every innovative idea. 3. How can you add value to the product and customer experience? Your customers need to gain benefit from purchasing your goods/services. 4. What are the most unusual characteristics of your business which will give you competitive advantage on the market? Establishing yourself in the market means you need some advantage over your competitors to attract their customers or new ones. 5. Have you researched your competition? In what ways do you feel you can do better than the competition? You need to know who are you facing to understand your market share, and how can you provide better solutions. 6. Do you have access to all the resources you need to launch the business? This includes funding, manpower, premises, equipment etc. 7. What is the size of the market? Do your research! 8. What would it take to create a minimum viable product and test it on the market? You don’t need a finished product to launch, start small and test your ideas. 9. What will it take to make profit? You need to have at least some estimated financial projections as to what you need to spend and what you need to earn in order to break even and then make a profit. 10. Is the problem you are trying to solve on the top priority list of the potential customers? Important consideration to see whether your products will sell. 11. What is your business model? How do you plan on charging your customers, how do your competitors do it, can you create additional revenue streams? 12. Is there a potential for growth? Think in the long term, can you scale the business further? 13. What are the possible roadblocks you are likely to face? You should attempt to find a solution for each problem you can think of. 14. Have you chosen a business name? Make sure that your name is descriptive of the branding and targets your customers. Ask people their input - choosing a name is an important matter as it will affect the rest of your branding. 15. Have you looked for your business name online? Ensure that no other business can be confused with yours. Ensure that the domain name and all social media accounts for your business name are available. I hope this answers your first question. 2. How do I decide which direction to invest my energy in and how can I develop my idea further? This will come to you much more clearly once you have found the answers to your first question. Ensure that you are spending your time in a way that produces results. Your first goal is to bring your MVP, to test it amongst customers, to learn from feedback and then to improve your product. Repeat this formula until you reach product market fit. I hope this helps - please don't hesitate to get on a call with me if you'd like to drill this down further.