The first step to building a successful startup is finding an idea.
Ideas are dime a dozen, but what’s rare to find are unique ideas that make a huge impact on the market. Although execution plays a major role in making any venture successful, the core ideas do have a significant impact as well.
How do you find unique ideas for a new startup? You need to identify the pain points of people around you and think of a solution.
We have interviewed thousands of founders to filter out some useful suggestions on finding unique ideas for a startup. Read on!
Decide Your Target Audience
You can’t build a startup that targets everyone because if you do that, in the end, it will target no one. Find a niche of people you love to help.
Airbnb focuses on travellers, Byju’s popular edTech startup focuses on K12 students, Upstox on stock market enthusiasts, so on and so forth.
If you want to grow faster you should be able to narrow down and find a clearly defined target audience. You can make use of tools like Google Trends and semRush.
Identify Problems Faced By Your Niche Audience
People don’t care about your products, what they do care about are themselves and their problems. They will only care about your product if it helps solve their problems.
Once you identify your niche audience, start making a list of all the problems that your target audience face. The main types of problems faced by an average customer can be monetary, learning, productivity or support.
But how do you identify the problems faced by your niche audience? There are several ways to do this:
Surveys
The easiest way to identify your customer problems is through asking them directly. Surveys are an excellent way to do this.
You can either draft up a few questions that can give you an idea of your customers or you can ask them to write in their views and needs through a survey.
Tools like Typeform and Google Forms will help you create quick surveys and you can then promote them through social media or Google Ads.
Forums
Forums like Quora are an entrepreneurs’ finest tools in finding customer pain points. Go through the thousands of questions being asked on the platform and filter out topics you can find a solution to.
Comment Sections
Stalking is not a good thing to do but when it comes to startups, you shouldn’t hesitate to stalk your audience. Follow the blogs your niche audience read, the YouTube channels they love, the social media groups your audience become a part of. Go through the comment sections of those channels and you’ll find plenty of problems to solve.
Keyword Research
Google knows what your audience is searching for and it can help you figure out customer pain points. How do you get access to these data? Tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, Google Trends and Ubersuggest can assist you on this.
Filter Out The Problems That You Can Offer A Solution
By now you will be having a complete list of the problems faced by your audience. Now what you should be doing is filtering out the list of problems that you can offer a product as a solution.
These lists are going to be your power ideas list, they are your go-to options to arrive at your ultimate startup idea.
Choose The Ideas That Overlap With Your Interests
Any founder would agree on the fact that ideas play a minimal role in the majority of startups, execution is what really makes the difference. For you to stay committed to the startup idea, you need to be passionate about what you do and the idea you come up with.
Define certain areas of interest you have that overlaps with the problems your audience is facing. Strike out every other idea that doesn’t resonate with your areas of interest.
Buy An Existing Business
If you want to avoid all the hassle of finding a startup idea, you can directly go ahead and buy an existing profitable startup. This is an expensive choice, however, you’d be guaranteed success since you’re buying an already profitable business.
Websites like Flippa, Empire Flippers are examples of sites where you can find profitable startups online.
Steps To Finding Unique Ideas For Startups
Summarizing everything that we said, here are the steps to find unique ideas for a new startup:
- Decide Your Target Audience
- Identify Problems Faced By Your Niche Audience
- Filter Out The Problems That You Can Offer A Solution
- Choose The Ideas That Overlap With Your Interests
- Buy An Existing Business (Alternative)
If you’re looking to launch a startup, here are some useful tips that can help you.
Frequently Asked Questions And Answers
Here are a few frequently asked question and answers based on our topic:
How do you find startup opportunities?
In order to find startup opportunities, you have to keep your eyes and ears open. Listen to your potential clients and customers. Observe your competitors and the industry trends. Keep educating yourself and you’ll find plenty of startup opportunities unveiling before you.
What are the three types of startup ideas?
The three types of startup ideas are 1. New Market, 2. New Technology, and 3. New Benefit. New Market ideas are already prevalent ideas in one market that are introduced to a new market with another name. New technology ideas are completely new ideas that never existed in the market before. New Benefit ideas are the ones that produce new benefits from the existing ideas.
What are the most successful small businesses?
According to nerdwallet, the four most successful small businesses are auto repair, food trucks, car wash services, and electronics repair.
What businesses will always be in demand?
If you are looking for an evergreen startup idea there are some business fields that will always be in-demand. Some of these evergreen business industries are tax preparation and book-keeping, catering services, website design, business consulting, and courier services.
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