Future Entrepreneurs Need to Focus on Markets, Trends And Problems, Not Ideas. - Forbes

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If you are someone who wants or wishes to be an entrepreneur but feel you don’t have the big idea, relax. It’s not about the big idea. Honestly, ideas are everywhere and they get pitched all the time. Savvy entrepreneurs and investors all say the same thing: what problem are you solving? If you examine startups that are successful, you will see that they leveraged a large market of customers, they positively exploited a trend or they solved an important customer problem. To be a successful entrepreneur, study one of these three things:  markets, trends or problems.

For the purpose of this article, markets are defined as large groups of people who have similar characteristics in their demographics and psychographics.  For example, the large markets of people in the United States are Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X and the Baby Boomers. These four market groups make up over 90% of the population in the USA. So, which of these groups interest you or are you most curious about? For example, Baby Boomers want to live forever and hold quite a bit of wealth so what do they need in order to live amazing and healthy lives?  They have already indicated that they are willing to “die in place” in lieu of being in a retirement home so what are the technology implications to monitor their health and safety? Study the major group of your choice and research as much as you can about them to discover what they might need next.

One of the best traits you can have as an entrepreneur is to be intensely curious. That curiosity will have you paying attention to trends, which are changing or disrupting several industries. Do you see the trends of natural and organic food (both for humans and pets), the continual drive to a rental economy (AirBnb, etc.), and the growth of eCommerce over retail?  These are major trends that are shifting entire industries and creating opportunities for newcomers to come in and grow just by leveraging a trend. Don’t believe it? In 2000, there were approximately 1,500 craft breweries in the USA. Today, there are over 6,500. If you had talked to marketers and craft brewers in the early 2000's, they would have all said the same thing. Craft beer is going to grow; it’s just a question of when and by how much. How did they know? They could see the changing tastes of early adopter consumers wanting a more quality craft beer. Be more curious about a couple of trends you care about and see where it leads you.

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The last area of focus for entrepreneurs and probably the most important is problems. Spotting, evaluating and solving problems could be one of the biggest drivers of startup companies. Why? If you solve a problem that either a large customer group (e.g. Baby Boomers, etc.) or an industry has (e.g. Uber versus taxis, etc.), the revenue size of the opportunity will be in the billions of dollars. You don’t have to worry about creating the market or growing the industry. Both are already there. Significant markets and industries are usually big and a successful solution to a problem can grow extremely fast. Dropbox was created because the founder was attending an event, had a presentation to make and forget his USB drive. We already had mobile storage via the USB drive. But we did not have cloud storage available anywhere on demand. Boom.   

 If you are working in a company today but really want to test your entrepreneurial metal someday, hone your skills and perfect your expertise. Be more curious and spend just a little more time researching markets and trends. Don’t focus on generating as many ideas as possible and pitching them to anyone that will listen. Instead, try and discover potential problems, talk to real customers to see if they have that problem and then focus on creating a solution that minimally solves that problem. There is a lot more that has to happen to create a successful startup but solving a key problem is the first major step. 

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https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernhardschroeder/2019/06/25/future-entrepreneurs-need-to-focus-on-markets-trends-and-problems-not-ideas/

2019-06-25 07:37:15Z
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