6 Marks of a Solid Business Idea

This post is going to be quick. I was thinking today about what really makes good business ideas stand out to me. I always feel like certain ideas just pass the gut-check test with flying colors. People ask me to hear their business ideas all the time.

Usually it’s a No, sometimes its a Maybe/I’m not sure, and rarely it’s a WOW YES! So here are some thoughts on what really marks a good idea in my mind:

  1. It is simple: you can explain it quickly, succinctly, and on the first try
  2. It doesn’t require feedback: you don’t need to go around asking everyone for their opinion. Most of them don’t know any better than you do. So when the idea is good, it really will only require iterating as you execute
  3. It is executable tomorrow: you can wake up in the morning and get cranking on it. There is no need to wait around thinking about how good it is. It’s a clear idea and all you need to do is add execution
  4. It is something you are intimate with: I always love hearing ideas from people with intimate knowledge of a market building ideas for that market (i.e. a former ad-sales executive building a company to provide tools for ad-sales teams)
  5. It gets you excited: you get a warm fuzzy feeling that overwhelms you and makes you jump when you think about it
  6. It is scalable: this is something that has growth potential with room for upside

The best part is that ideas are really only the first step and the relatively easy ingredient. To really bake the pie, don’t forget to add execution.

About these ads

About Boris M. Silver

Entrepreneur
This entry was posted in business and tagged , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

3 Responses to 6 Marks of a Solid Business Idea

  1. azharumar says:

    I often come up with start-up ideas. And i beleive that they are executable and simple and is upto my level. I just started a blog “mY startUp !deas” – http://mystartupideas.wordpress.com
    So i thought i would put up my ideas here. I just have one post for the time being.

    I am an undergraduate student doing BBM.

  2. I follow your posts for a long time and must tell that your posts are always valuable to readers.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s