Find That Elusive Start-Up Idea: Create A Process Using Someone Else’s Idea

Since I quit my job to run my own business, old classmates from my undergraduate and graduate business programs are coming out of the woodwork to contact me. They all want to know how I “did it.”

I think the majority of business students long to own their own business and to be their own boss. I often hear “man, I can’t wait until I can start my own business.” My immediate response is “what the heck is stopping you?” Inevitably their response is one or both of the following: 1. I have no money 2. I have no ideas or skills people will pay for.

The problem with business programs

Business programs, whether undergraduate or MBA, focus on processes. Finance majors focus on the process of analyzing and forecasting a budget or product launch. Accounting majors focus on the process of keeping track of all transactions. Management students focus on the processes and tools used to manage people. Marketing is the process of taking a product to market and maximizing sales. Even entrepreneurship programs are simply the process of “starting” a business.

All of these programs are taught in the context of established business practices. Guerilla marketing is not taught in (most) business schools. Bootstrapping is not taught to a Harvard MBA. Business students are groomed to plug into existing business models. Once “plugged in,” an MBA simply adapts the processes they learned at B-School to either fit with their employer’s culture or to change the culture to adhere to what they learned in business school.

The lack of creativity

Best practices are taught in business school – not ground breaking ones. Ground breaking practices do not plug into an existing company. Business school students are not rewarded for creating something groundbreaking; all ideas must fit into the pre-existing idea of a “business model.” Business students think in soft terms of “maximizing” and “streamlining” not hard terms such as “creating” or “destroying.”

Even classes that ask you to “create” a business plan for a novel business require you to take the idea and cram it into what is more-or-less a business plan template. This is not creative. This is adapting an ostensibly novel idea to someone else’s template. There are some very creative business students out there who create their own business – but there are clearly those that lack such creativity!

Use this to your advantage

While I may get a lot of flack for the last two sections, I think that it is fantastic that business schools put an emphasis on processes and their improvement rather than raw creation. While it clearly works for people that want to be plugged into a larger machine, it’s a competitive advantage to the person that wants to start up his own business.

Think like a business student

You don’t need to come up with your own idea – you just need to apply business processes to someone else’s idea. Despite all of the potential pitfalls of partnerships, this is where a business student who longs to be an entrepreneur but can’t think of an idea can get started. You’ve got a distinct advantage – you know how a business is run. There’s a ton of people with great ideas who do not know how to run a business.

Seek out people with unique ideas or knowledge

Many people have great ideas, but they don’t see the marketability of the idea. Or maybe they do see the marketability but don’t know where to start. These are the people you can partner with to get a business going.

When dealing with an idea, which may be a manufactured product, service, web app, software product, etc., there’s always the potentially hazardous requirement a large investment upfront, or additional unique skills that you don’t have. While a savvy entrepreneur can navigate around these costs and issues, I think that it’s best to steer clear of costly ideas if you’re trying to start a business quickly.

Avoid cost pitfalls – sell information

Anyone who’s gone through some level of higher education has probably hung out with graduate or PhD students, engineers, researchers or the like. These people are FULL of highly specialized (read “niche”) data. Some of them are very business savvy – but many don’t bother with business at all (I know, a generalization, but I challenge you to prove me wrong!).

Why should you give a crap about these eggheads? Because they can be your product! If someone has done highly specialize research, developed unique contacts, or just has a deep understanding of an obscure topic, you can market the information in their brain!

Sell someone else’s info? WTF?

This is where you need to be creative. Spend time talking with people who have a unique background. They may have contacts in a foreign country that could be valuable to certain people in another country. You may know someone who has created a specialized process or software product that has not previously been marketed. Possibly someone you know has a deep knowledge of an existing product, process, or software that you could use to create in depth user guides. The possibilities are endless.

Do your research

If you’re a business student, there’s two areas which you’ll need to research (you’ll need to research a bit more if you don’t have a business background): 1.) starting a business on the cheap and 2.) the specialized information you plan to sell. There’s tons of places to look to for information on starting your own business, whether package it as an ebook, website, consulting service, or something else. Getting to know your own product can be as simple as having several beers a few nights per week with the person whose knowledge you plan to market. Once you’ve got a basic understanding, collaboration tools such as Google Docs, Google Wave, or Basecamp can be very useful to get the details straight. (Here are some other ideas from Lifehacker.)

Be creative

Often times the reason that the information you wish to market has not previously been sold is that the mode of commercialization may not be readily apparent. Be creative and think up new and interesting ways to bring the information to market. Maybe it’s direct consulting, podcasts, or videos. Maybe it’s a matchmaker service for a certain type of professionals. Maybe you sell dogs that are trained to respond to Klingon. Think outside of the box!

Be fearless

Starting a business which represents you as an expert when you’ve got only cursory knowledge of a subject can be very stressful. It’s easy to let the fear of what you don’t know cause you to stall out and not begin a business. Don’t be afraid to admit you don’t know an answer – tell a client that you must ask your “associate” (read knowledgable partner) who has the answer. Another possibility is don’t accept phone calls and drive all conversations through email so that you’re never put on the spot with a question you can’t answer.

Quit making excuses and start the process today. It costs nothing to speak with people or meet new ones. Get out there and do it today. Don’t be scared of failing – if you don’t try you can’t fail, but you can’t succeed either!

Image by Samuel Mann