From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
If you want to have a great startup idea, don't try to think of a startup. If you focus on creating a startup, you'll be grounding yourself in the present, studying customers living in the present, their problems in the present, and their unmet needs in the present. You want to define a future market by living in the future.
How many times have we all heard someone say, 'I had a really good business idea, but then I found somebody else had already done it—so I gave up'? I'd say the opposite: fantastic! If someone's done it, is still in business, and it's working, that's proof you're onto a solid idea.
Making mistakes is necessary- if you don't make mistakes, you can never grow. Every failure is a little lesson in how to be a winner. Failure is an opportunity to learn, to start again, to see problems, and find solutions. Failing may be the reason you win next time!
If there's one thing that thematically aligns all startups: a tolerance for innovation in how the companies are run. This means there's a little bit more risk taking and attacking problems in a way that hasn't been done before.
For the entrepreneurial spirit to manifest as successful business and social endeavours, we need a nurturing environment and an infrastructure that celebrates the human will to solve problems and progress.
It's important to differentiate between a large market and a large opportunity; they're not one and the same. The ideal scenario is to tackle a significant problem within a substantial market, thereby creating a sizable opportunity.
I wasn't thinking about success or being 'big' or creating a huge business. I was thinking about answering a need, a void, creating something that wasn't there before.
My mother's unbelievable parenting in deploying enormous self-esteem and confidence meant I believed in myself in a way that was blind. The best entrepreneurs are the most optimistic and completely out of tune with reality right? Why would you do it otherwise. My father made me a word-is-bond, word-is-everything, shake a hand and stick to it kinda' guy. That combined with blind faith and belief has become an amazing concoction and something I live-off even today.
Above all, great entrepreneurs have completed and undivided commitment to their company and doing what it takes to make it successful. Building any new major company is much harder than most realize, so if requires a very high pain threshold – great entrepreneurs are so tough mentally and emotionally.
Talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. Technology is a great equaliser, and an enabler of opportunity. I saw this first hand and through my work now – whether that's investment or philanthropy, that's the work I want to promote.
The word engage is the most important thing when it comes to creating a strong brand. From day one, any time someone would comment I would comment back to them- and I started to understand our audience really quickly. I probably spent 3 or 4 hours a day on our social media channel replying to people.
We were poor, had no branding, and had no money- the only way we could get people into store was to put everything on rollers, and move it to the side, so we could have yoga classes in the middle of the store- a lot of inventions come from the mother of necessity!