MISSION POSSIBLE

Why is this problem important to you?

The biggest question to ask yourself is: why do you want to solve this problem? Answering this question will help you better understand whether you are the one who should be working on the solution. Purpose is what will motivate you to wake up excited each day to continue the pursuit. Therefore, it is essential for understanding whether this idea is good for you. If you can not find purpose in the idea, how can you expect to recruit others to help you build your idea?

Money can be my purpose! Nope. Money alone should not act as the purpose for pursuing an idea. Startups take a long time to generate money. You are likely to run out of gas fast if money is your fuel. Only a the tiny percentage of startups have become a successful business compared to the many more startups that have not. A startup is a long, volatile, and emotional journey. Purpose is the midnight oil that fuels your flame to continue working when the going gets tough. If you can not find purpose in your idea, toss this one aside. Again, there will be many more ideas ahead that you will find purpose in.

Case in Point

In 2010, while living in NYC I attended the New York Tech Meetup (NYTM) every first Tuesday of the month. It was the stage to present your idea on, and it was where I first dipped my toes in the water of tech entrepreneurship. One night at the NYTM, I was pitching someone I met to become the CTO for an idea that I had. He was in turn pitching me to join him in his mission to start the next OpenTable for hair salons. Ultimately, I decided to join him since he already had a small team, built an initial product, and raised some capital. So I left my job and went full time to pursue the hair salon software startup.

My role was focused on marketing and sales. I knocked on almost every salon door in Manhattan, looking for one more salon to become an early adopter. The feedback was pretty consistent. The answer was no. Salon owners did not want a digital system that could let the government know actually how much money they were making. They were content with their existing system for appointment scheduling, powered by pen and paper.

Ultimately, we had bet on the wrong market. It turned out that there were two segments in the market. First, the business owners who were the stylist or who hired stylists. Second, the independent stylist who rented a chair at a salon. We were building a product that suited the former, and the latter is who we should have been building a product for. As time went on, my willpower to continue selling salon software quickly dimensioned. After about 6 months in, the truth began to settle in. I was simply not interested in solving the problem. I was not the one who should have been solving this problem. It was my first real startup experience, and out of it came an invaluable lesson to learn. Finding purpose in the problem you solve is critical to any entrepreneur’s success.

How big is your MISSION?

The next question to evaluate is, how big are you going with your idea. Are you trying to cure cancer? Improve a user experience? Or simply sell something that already exists? For simplicity, the question of how big you are going can be framed into three distinct categories:

Going to Mars (New Paradigm)

New paradigms are the most innovative and disruptive ideas. Disruptive ideas are at the forefront of fiction and the future. They may exist conceptually, but more often they only in the form of research and development and not ready for adoption. The adoption of a new paradigm is typically limited by a major breakthrough for affordability.

New Paradigms are new S curves (adoption curves of innovation) that will have a lasting and hopefully positive effect for the future. In tech, these are the internet, mobile, blockchain, AR/VR, AI, and electric battery powered vehicles. In medical science, think about the paradigms of Antibiotics, Vaccines, Anesthesia and XRay Imaging. Creating a new paradigm requires the most capital, skills, and risk for executing, but have the largest impact and reward for solving.

Going to the Moon (New Platform)

New paradigms bring opportunities for new platforms to be built on top of them. If the technology to pioneer Artificial Intelligence (GPUs and learning models) is a new paradigm, OpenAI and ChatGPT would be an example of new platforms. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Etherium are examples of platforms built on the paradigm of a decentralization or Blockchain. Social networks and marketplaces like Meta are platforms built on the internet paradigm. On-demand applications like Uber and Lyft are examples of platforms built on the mobile paradigm. Platforms, enable others to create economies or new innovations. New platforms are generally easier for individuals or teams to launch relative to new paradigms, but still require lots of capital, skills and iteration to find mass adoption.

Orbiting Earth (New Experience)

New experiences are the least innovative, as they play on existing behavior and require the least change in behavior to adopt. Since they are the easiest to execute, they have the most competition. Marketing generally plays the largest part in the success of these ideas being adopted. These ideas are typically disrupted by trends and fads, so survival depends on branding and messaging to remind customers of their relevance. While the impact of these ideas may be the lowest relative to aiming for Mars or the Moon, staying close to home can still be appealing, as these ideas relatively cost less capital to start and operate.

Each option here is a function of impact, innovation, risk and reward. Use this framework as a rubric for where you want to go with your idea and determine if you are still confident enough to continue the pursuit of your mission.

Sharing is Caring

Once you have written down, researched and evaluated your idea, you are ready to start sharing it with others. Perhaps you are hesitant to share your ideas with others, because you don’t want someone to steal your idea. Rest assured that it is hardly likely that someone else will be as excited as you to execute your idea. And no, you do not need anyone to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) in order to share your idea. Another reason to share your idea with others is to collect more feedback and get connected to people who may be able to help you or even join you in on your mission. Lastly, the more people you share your idea with, the more accountable you will feel towards getting your idea officially launched. 

With that said, not everyone you tell will love your idea or provide constructive feedback. Some people are better at visualizing the future than others. The great author Paulo Coelho once said, Don’t base your decisions on the advice of those who won’t have to deal with the results. It is great to get other’s feedback, but it is also important to understand what feedback is constructive vs. an opinion of uncertainty. At the end of the day, you can not let opinions stop you from being successful, but rather listen to the feedback you are receiving from the experiments you test during your iterative journey.

Ideas are cheap

Just having an idea is cheap! Alone they are just intangible thoughts. Many people have them, but few actually do anything with them. Executing an idea and transforming a thought into something tangible is what makes it extraordinary. Executing is the expensive part, not necessarily expensive in terms of just money, but rather the currency of opportunity cost, effort, uncertainty, time, and vulnerability. However, going from an idea to executing your idea does not have to be a daunting feat. You can crawl, walk, run to get the proverbial ball rolling. As long as you can move your idea from just an ephemeral thought in your head to an actionable experiment, you will be executing towards progress.

Crawl (Side Projects)

One way to crawl into the swing of things is by running experiments via side projects. The key here is to better understand the problem by fielding market research, leading surveys and running tests on the side of your day job. While you may not have the actual resources to build a solution/product yet, you may be able to sell others with the necessary skills and resources based on the confidence instilled in your research experiments.

Walk (Moonlight)

While some people may have the luxury to quit their day job and execute their idea full time, most people can’t afford to do such. Since you are still working towards the validation of your hypothesis, it may be too risky for you to go all in. Thus, moonlighting on the side is a good option. Moonlighting gets its name from working late nights and weekends, but some employers may provide you with enough flexibility to moonlight during your work week. Every job is different in terms of down time, remote culture and flexibility. You will ultimately have to navigate your time management and ensure you are not in violation of any invention assignment conflicts or other work policies.

Run (All In)

There will be a time when you will need to take on more risk and commit more time in order for your idea to truly take-off. When it is time to take a leap of faith and go full time, one option to consider is asking your employer for a sabbatical or leave of absence. This could allow you to have more time to commit to your project with the upside of being able to return to your job should your idea not take-off. While leaving the stable income and benefits of a corporate job may sound scary, you will likely return having gained much more knowledge from the experiences of working on your startup even if you fail. We touch more on this in the Hero’s Journey section of the The Return guide.

When going all in, you will no doubt be more productive and motivated to grind towards progress relative to working on a side project. Additionally, most investors, accelerator and incubator programs will require you to be full time before investing, as your commitment demonstrates how serious you are about achieving your vision. Thus, while it is safe to start out with a side project to further iterate and test your hypothesis, going all in to execute on your vision could be what ultimately makes or breaks your success.

Mission Checklist

In this first guide to the Startup Galaxy, we explored how to evaluate an idea using the Launch Charter framework. Download the PDF Launch Charter and begin writing down your idea. So, the next time you have that eureka moment, your Mission is the following:

1. Write your down your idea so you can begin evaluating it. 

2. Research the problem so that you can validate the assumptions you have with your idea. 

3. Determine if you find purpose in solving this problem.

4. Decide how big your mission is in terms of innovation and risk. 

5. Begin telling others about your idea to gather feedback and expand your network.

6. Execute your idea by crawling, walking, and running!