The Startup Ideation Process
What are good startup ideas and where do they come from?
I recently ran a workshop on creating good ideas for startup founders. I don’t see this process talked about much in the public discourse around startups and businesses, etc, so I figured it would be useful to write it up here.
What is Ideation?
If you pop open a dictionary, you will find a definition of ideation that reads something like this:
Ideation: the formation of ideas.
This is a good definition, but for our purposes, it’s not great. A better definition would be something like:
Useful Ideation: the formation of good ideas.
Much better right? So we see that the real magic of ideation for a useful purpose like a startup is finding a process for identifying the good ideas out of a pile of random ones.
The Process
The process for identifying good ideas is very simple:
Collect Ideas
Test if they are good
Repeat until an idea is good
Now, just because it’s simple, does not mean this process will be easy. I have personally found this process to be extremely difficult. However, I find it comforting and helpful to remember that at its core the process is simple.
I often meet with startup founders that are lost in some details of the process and feel like they are drowning in some specific details. I usually start by reminding them of the three-step process above which helps contextualize the problems they are struggling with and can serve as a calming mantra that as long as you are in the three-step process, you are probably doing the correct thing.
How do I collect good ideas?
Just start collecting them! Seriously, I don’t think there is a right or wrong way to do this as long as you are generating ideas. If you are feeling stuck, try to have some new experiences (read a book, talk to a friend or colleague, listen to a podcast, etc) and force yourself to generate one or two ideas out of that experience.
Here are a few other tips I’ve found helpful:
Write everything down - You should in practice be generating a lot of ideas and it’s foolish to think you will accurately remember all of them.
Try to figure out a standard pattern or format for ideas - This is helpful because it allows you to more easily compare two ideas and decide which one you would like to pursue.
A Standard Format for Ideas
As I mentioned above, I find having a standard format for my ideas to be helpful. I’m sure there are many variants of a helpful format, but one I’ve always found to be simple and useful is the “Startup Madlibs” format:
I am developing a defined offering,
to help a defined audience
solve a problem with
secret sauce.
I keep a notebook where I have a bunch of combinations of this format. One of the things I like about it is the ability to mix and match things like a problem with an audience or an offering with a problem. You can imagine that once you start generating ideas in a format like this, you will not have a shortage of idea combinations.
Testing Ideas: Is This Idea Good?
Testing which of the ideas are good is the next most important step. The first thing to realize about testing ideas is that this is a process that must involve the external world outside of your brain. Let’s explore why.
Ideas are simulations.
Ideas are great. You have created your ideas in your brain based on all of your valuable and useful life experiences, learnings, and thoughts!
However, your ideas in your head are, at best, a simulation of what you think is happening in reality. It might be a really, well-informed simulation, but it’s still a simulation.
Colliding Ideas with Reality
To test your ideas, you need to collide that idea (simulation) with some good, old-fashioned reality. Again, this is one of those things that is simple, but quite difficult in practice.
I think there is even less of a “correct” way to do this than there is to generate ideas. My best advice is to do the following:
Share your ideas often with as many types of people as you can
Listen carefully to feedback and take detailed notes on what you hear
The more you share ideas, the better you get at doing it. I’m sure you will figure out a cadence, style of sharing, and sharing audience as you go. The most important thing is just to start.
Reviewing Feedback
I guarantee you will get some good feedback on your ideas. Even a lack of feedback on a particular is quite illuminating.
It’s important to take some time to review the feedback periodically and use that to rank which ideas you think are the “best”. Best in this context means “Which idea do I think is most likely correct based on the feedback I am getting.”
A ranking will likely start to develop amongst your ideas based on this metric and you’ll likely find that there is a top idea or two that will start to feel most exciting and real to you. Those are the ideas that are worth pursuing.
Moving Forward
Let’s review our ideation process mantra:
Collect Ideas
Test if they are good (collide the with reality)
Repeat until an idea is “good”
As I mentioned before, this process is simple, but hard in practice.
Onward!
Hope this is helpful to you! Please share it, adapt it, and don’t hesitate to reach out to me with questions or thoughts about the process. I love talking shop about this stuff.
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