This Is Where Great Startup Ideas Come FromIf you want to know if your startup idea is any good, these are the questions to ask.

Instead, I ask my own question:

“What makes you think it’s good?”

Cool Ideas Versus Must-Have Products

We all want to love what we do, and chances are pretty good that if we love what we do, we’ll be successful with it. But there’s a cautionary tale I hear over and over again, even from experienced, successful entrepreneurs: The startup graveyard is littered with ideas that the founders ran with simply because they fell in love with the idea of the idea.

There’s nothing wrong with chasing a cool startup idea, or falling in love with a startup idea without any due diligence or R&D. But at some point, definitely before we get too far down the execution road, we need to take the time to validate the idea outside of our own heart and brain.

Doing that presents a double-edged sword. You can’t just run around asking other people what they think of your idea. Like I said, it doesn’t really matter what they think, and doing so also presents the unfinished version of your idea to a lot of people who may not understand, might add their own crazy take on your crazy idea, or just plain steal it.

Yeah, that last one happens more than you think.

On the other hand, asking yourself how great your idea is — that’s like looking into a magic mirror and asking how attractive you are. Entrepreneur ego issues aside, that mirror isn’t incentivized to tell the truth.

It’s a tricky trap, and one that I still have to force myself not to fall into. So here’s what I do. If I come up with what I believe to be a brilliant startup idea, and if I ask myself why I think it’s good, and if I can’t put the answer into one of four categories, I’ve learned to bury the idea before it buries me.

Invent a Great Product

Would your product be successful if it existed? This is probably the most popular category of startup idea inspiration, and it also makes up the vast majority of those startup ideas in the graveyard.

Of course, you have to envision your product being successful for you to run with it. But you should have some concrete, or at least tangible evidence as to reasons why. A lot of founders get tripped up by thinking that everyone will buy their product just because they would themselves. But after some time spent trying to sell new things, you realize that people generally don’t like new, because they don’t like change.

So new is not a benefit, it’s actually working against you.

Ultimately, this is a high-minded version of the cool product trap. To reiterate, there’s a big gap between cool and successful, and that gap is filled with fire and spikes.

The best way to start proving the idea is to ask the question: “Well then, why doesn’t it exist yet?”

If the success of the product seems like a no-brainer once it exists, there’s probably a multitude of reasons why no one has attempted to make a business out of it. Understand and then figure out how to overcome those reasons first.

Capitalize On a Massive Market Shift

Is the market for your idea small now but could quickly grow to be massive? This is the trendspotting path to entrepreneurship – be the first to market and the best solution for the one percent of trendsetters, then be in position for the windfall when the mainstream catches up to the early adopters.

This involves making some educated but risky guesses about trends in the overall market for your product. It’s very easy in hindsight to predict that everyone would want their movies via streaming. But there was also a moment at about the same time that predicted everyone would want their movies in 3D.

It helps to have intimate knowledge of the market you’re trying to fit the product into, either by having a lot of experience being a part of it, a good deal of experience selling into it, or spending a ton of time talking to potential customers in it.

Disrupt an Aging Industry

Is the target industry overdue for change and modernization?

I’d say this is a mandatory requirement if your startup is looking to go high-growth. One of the reasons my previous NLG startup Automated Insights went from a strictly sports-industry focus to an industry-agnostic focus is that while sports data was an area that was undergoing a data revolution, we didn’t see the end game of that revolution as being particularly fruitful. The industry was on the receiving end of quite a bit of technical disruption, but not really changing with it.

At my current startup Spiffy, we’re working in the automotive industry and bringing it into the mobile era. You can’t find too many industries more in need of a data and software makeover. The key for us is to stay two-to-three years ahead of the industry, and hope we’ve chosen the right spot on the path for when they catch up.

On the far end of the aging industry spectrum is something like healthcare, where there are so many walls around data and tech that the barrier to entry must be considered. A ton of entrepreneurs have great ideas around healthcare, but when they try to implement them, they wind up running into brick wall after brick wall until they give up.

In the aging industry idea garden, the timing of the execution is just as important as the brilliance of the idea, even more so.

Maximize Talent and Figure It Out

What if we just put smart people together to see what they can produce?

I’d be remiss if I didn’t list this one, but I’d also be irresponsible if I didn’t warn you that this usually only works for experienced entrepreneurs. So why do a lot of first-time entrepreneurs pair up or team up? Because teamwork, which is never a bad idea, but it’s not a reason to start a company.

Sure, having maximum talent is also a mandatory requirement to get to growth. None of my high-growth ideas would have gone high-growth if I didn’t surround myself with people who were smarter than me. And I like to think I’ve been and continue to be one of those smarter people at other startups that weren’t based on my own ideas.

But don’t fall into the trap of “if you assemble the team, great things will happen.” I see this a lot with college entrepreneurship, but I also see it with veteran startups, where they bring in experienced, talented people who are just wrong for the idea and the business, and bad things happen.

There is no better way to lose a friend than to work with them through tough times. And in my experience anyway, there’s no better way to make a friend than to work with them through tough times.

It’s Not Just One Single Idea

None of my ideas for products or companies have become successful from one single point of inception, and that’s where a lot of new founders get tripped up.

The conventional wisdom seems like you get an idea, you draft the plans, you hire the workers, you find the customers. That’s like the derivative of every business school definition of starting up. And to some extent, it’s correct, but there’s another path to consider. It’s idea on top of idea.