Creativity Exercise - Two Words

Our first creativity exercise is called Two Words.
Open a book or website, and point to a word at random.
Now point to another word.
These two words now make up the name of your fake company.
What does your fake company sell?
Who are your customers?
And how do you go about selling it?
You don't need to take the words literally.

Creativity Exercise - Mindmapping

write a word or phrase of something you're interested in,
like technology, travel, or entertainment.
Spend the next several minutes reading
the first few things that come to mind around that word,
and then a few things that come to mind around each of those and so on.
Try to go at least three to four layers out.
When you're done, highlight a few
of the words in the outside layer,
and piece them together into a potential company.

Creativity Exercise - The Brick Test

Take a brick.
If you don't have a brick, think about a brick.
Now come up with as many alternative uses for the brick is possible in one minute.
You can do this with a friend and compare ideas after.

Brainstorming and Filtering

Finding Opportunities

Look for ways that current customers of the market aren't fully satisfied with the solutions available, plus look for potential customers who do not have access or skills for current offerings.

List your own underserved needs or frustrations
Listen to customers in this market about their frustrations
Watch your competitors — both top companies and newly hyped companies in the industry, assessing their strengths and weaknesses. Read online customer reviews of current offerings and identify their biggest unmet needs.
Assess barriers to being a customer to see if there are certain skills, access, awareness, etc. that makes the offering accessible to these customers, but prevent it from being desirable or accessible to others.

Some Reminders for the Process

As you brainstorm, there are NO BAD PROBLEMS TO SOLVE

Build on concepts — ask “how might this work?” versus “why wouldn’t it work?”
Write down ALL problems — no matter how silly – they can build to something great!
Go for quantity — this isn’t the time to be filtering yet — that comes later.

Avoid:

Thinking that it's already been done.
Waiting only for "quality" ideas.
Focusing on the solution instead of the problem.

Filtering

Our tool for filtering is to check the items roughly against “fit” and “potential”.

Fit — be a founding team that others believe in
Roughly assess each problem based on how excited you would be to work on it, and whether or not it plays to your strengths.

Potential — give confidence that you would be creating value that you can capture
Roughly assess each problem based on whether there is a real need with customers who are desperate for a solution.

Determine which problems score high on both dimensions. Narrow to a few problems through this process, then review these a bit further. Do some research, plus get some outside input. If you find yourself leaning towards one even if it not being the highest ranked, that's fine! Trust your gut over the numbers — this was just a helpful first pass to narrow the list.

There’s no magical formula for the perfect idea, but it’s important to be passionate about what you are working on, have the ability to execute on it, and feel confident in the potential.

Teaming

Teaming

Relationships are hard, and this is especially true in startups, when the ups and downs of the process cause emotions and tensions to run high. Startups are much more likely to fail due to issues within the founding team than any other problem. Sixty-five percent of startup failures result from “people problems,” compared with only thirty-five percent failing for any other reason—including funding, customer acquisition, and product development.

You can minimize interpersonal challenges by finding the right co-founders and setting up expectations for how you’ll work together. The success of a team can be broken down into three parts:

Design - finding the right complementary co-founders.
Launch - setting expectations and norms.
Process - managing the culture relative to norms and expectations.

While you may be tempted to startup your company alone, keep in mind that there can be a lot of potentially valuable reasons to have co-founders: complementing your skills, getting a more well-rounded perspective, having support through the ups and downs of a startup, and more.

Team Design

Team design is about having the right people—finding cofounders with a similar vision and values, and with complementary personalities and skills. Many entrepreneurs start by finding others who have similar interests, like their friends. Instead, entrepreneurs should start look for people who have the same values and reasons for wanting to start a business. Skills can be learned and interests can change, but shared values and motivation create a strong foundation.

Shared vision - have a common "why". The best cofounder teams have similar drives for starting their company, and this plays out in their decisions as they develop and grow the business.
Complementary skills – we refer to three types: the builder, brander, and business developer
- The builder is the technical co-founder and product developer. This may include skills of coding or product prototyping.
- The brander connects the customer to your offering, including marketing, brand guidelines, and visual design.
- The business developer is the operations, finance, and sales person. This person hustles to get the right partners and customers.
Shared interests - (least important) Once you’ve aligned with compatible teammates around similar values, it becomes surprisingly easier to find common ground to develop business ideas.

Team Launch

Setting up team norms and expectations is the “launch.” Most team issues come down to a misalignment in expectations, so it’s important to set these clearly up front. Know what is important (and not important!) to everyone, how you’ll communicate, when people can make decisions without checking in, whether you’ll work together in the same room or separately, etc.

These discussion topics for the first few meetings that may help reduce friction caused from misalignment:

Values and motivations: Share why you’re interested in the project—what drives each of you and what aspects of the project appeal to you?
Company vision: Ask teammates to share their visions for the future of the company. It’s important to ensure that this isn’t a simple project or app, but that there is a bigger mission around which the team can align.
Working style: Share aspects of your personality and preferences that are relevant to the team settings, as well as your commitments outside of work.
Roles and responsibilities: There are two options here: either assign roles in advance and have specific responsibilities within each role, or assess needs as they arise and assign responsibilities based on skills, interest, and capacity.
Establish and agree to your team norms:

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