Were all great startups dumb ideas once?

Or genius foreseeing abilities?

Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder

And brilliance lies in the eyes of the one who has envisioned

Where do ideas come from?
Well, Ideas are dime a dozen. It is you who can generate revenue from something that is worth a dime.

They say we have three minds:
One is the obvious brain,
the second- the heart
and third- the gut.

A decision made on the basis of each gives out different results and are used in various plots, individually or with each other. Of course, the brain is the CPU with the neurons firing up left right and center throughout our existence. It is responsible for thinking, cognition, and perception. The heart is the mind popular for making 'mindless' decisions based on emotions, the choices that have minimal calculations involved; the best example being- falling in love. The gut feeling overlaps here but makes rather safe decisions and forms your identity. The best example of this feeling is the one owned by Nike. You know it.

So where do ideas come from out of these three? Well, the best ones involve all three, along with all the knowledge and experience you have. Ideas that come out of all these three minds are usually more thought through, have emotional passion linked to them and give you courage and confidence to implement the idea at the right time and right place.

The confusion
Is my idea too simple? is my idea stupid? Does it seem too obvious?

A species with three minds is bound to suffer from overthinking. We also have startups that generate out of mindless underthinking and a wishful approach that believes that everything is dependent on luck.

TL;DR these are the questions you must be asking

Will my idea fill a gap in a specific industry? In what ways does it help people and is there room for more convenience?

Ideas are easy to judge but difficult to pursue.

Judge an idea on the basis of its impact. Or better yet- don't. Start pursuing your own.

Just like books, we judge ideas by its cover. Before picking up a book, you pick it up by the looks of its front cover. To get more ideas, you read the summary written at the back and then you go home to reading it.

Let's put the idea implementation journey into three phases:
Phase 1: Idea
Phase 2: How (process)
Phase 3: Profit

Usually, when we get to know of an idea, we directly jump to phase three when we judge. A comment before Uber launched:

What precisely happened is that Bruce liked the idea of calling a taxi and looked at the amount raised by Uber without knowing the phase two of the startup process.

Here is one in reference to Instagram:

You get the idea right?

Lemming and trends

"If your friend jumps in a well, would you do it too?" is a quintessential dialogue almost every teenager in India has heard in their household. It is something quite relevant in the startup space of India too. Keywords like startup ideas for business, business startup ideas, low-cost business startup ideas, small business ideas, easy to start business ideas plague search engines without making these entrepreneurs realize that you may get answers to biggest questions of life on Quora but you can't get ideas in blog listicles people have written to get web traffic from you.

The following trends have never worked and never will. The life of ideas based on trends is limited to the life of trends themselves. They come and go. Trends are like hashtags challenges on social media. Remember #KikiChallenge? That was one year ago. Today people are busy following the #BottleCapChallenge- which will die soon.

Psychology of the eureka moment

When something as risky as a startup is thought of, one either has a eureka moment with the infamous bulb lighting up or has a process of thoughts that calculates possibilities for hours, days or even months.

Not enough emphasis can be put on the fact that we love stories. We love a good ol' story of rags to riches and people turning billionaires overnight. We all know about stories that have faced rejection and then have become successful from another investor who either made a calculated risk or had a dumb luck moment with that project.

When you get that idea that you want to pursue, if the idea is based on how much scope of profit it is going to make, it is a wrong headstart for the journey you are going to begin.

The goal must be filling a gap not making money. Profit is a residual of making a dent.

Although, it is important to go with the gut feeling if your brain and heart co-operate. Along with the Eureka moment, there will be skeptics, doubters, and nay-sayers who would want you to stay in your comfort zone.

Here's to the crazy ones

Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.

An iconic cluster of words that doesn't fail to give them goosebumps to people with dreams sparkling in their eyes; of making it big in the world, from the guy who's 'startup' is today a fuelling tool for literally every professional ever.

Everyone wants to become the next job.

Without knowing, what it took for them to create what it is today.

These are the words that an entrepreneur might consider as the preamble of the startup constitution. You might even find these words framed in the properties of the best startup companies.

How does it sound?

Ideas sound dumb sometimes. The first impression matters a lot here, especially when you present your idea. If you said I want to create a search engine when Yahoo already existed, no one would be interested in your idea. But if you say we want to

"organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful."

You have Google today.

It depends a lot on how you pitch the idea. When we are branding startups, we make sure that they have a pitch that reflects the brand and is convincing enough for the investor to know that you are worthy of the investment.

"Stupid is as stupid does" is a saying that might sum up why some ideas sound dumb. It is one of the most common mistakes that businesses make.