How to choose the best business idea

5 points every founder should check in a check list

This is a common story I keep hearing from my students on Entrytoo: I’m a creative person so I’ve come up with dozens of business ideas for a startup. Which one to go with? How to choose the best one, read — the one with more chances for success? Are there technics, that might help you evaluate “chances for success score” for your venture and steps one should take before investing time and/or money into business?

I like to use the old-fashioned assigned value lists and, honestly, this approach proved it’s efficiency more times that I can count on my fingers.

How exactly does it work? I make a list for every idea I want to pursue focusing on 5 major areas:

1. My personal expertise in the area. Do I have a deep personal knowledge of the subject? Can I relate to the customer’s pain I’m going to solve? This checkpoint is more important than you might initially think (like, Ok, I know nothing about cooking, but it won’t stop me from building a platform for cooking professionals, because I clearly see a growing demand in the market). Even if you can afford hiring a professional to build your product you will be a better first user, if you look at it from other perspective users point of view. And when time comes it’ll be easier to showcase your project for investors, banks or accelerators if you have a personal expertise to highlight.
2. Accessibility to a sufficient team. Do I have someone in my circle whom I might attract on the project based on this particular business idea? I’m not necessarily talking about technical co-founder, though if you might think of someone with technical background who will be sold from the get go on your idea of building a crash junkyard cars services marketplace in Timbooktoo — move this idea to the top of your list. If you can’t think of a full-time team willing to invest their sweat in your project for 12 months without pay — welcome to the club. That’s where most of founders are, but it doesn’t mean you should forget about your startup dream and apply for the book keeper position (with all due respect to book keepers, your profession is marvellous, folks). Think of someone you might be able to hunt as an advisor. These people are crucial in terms of feedback, improvement ideas and connections to potential investors in future. If you can somehow reach out to a well known person and name her as your advisor — forget about…