How to find a business idea

To start your own business, you must comply with several mandatory points. These are the idea, business plan, start-up capital and name. If the first three points are practical or economic tasks, then the last one is exclusively creative. It's good if the name has been spinning in my head for a long time and all that remains is to realize the start of the business. But what to do if everything is ready, even the documents are drawn up (you can skip the name, register an individual entrepreneur by last name, but then your business name will not be protected from plagiarism), but you don’t know how to come up with a company name? Even the idea that comes to mind is better to double-check. An unfortunate name threatens to spoil the fruits of labor.

The importance of choosing the right company name

It would seem that difficult to come up with a company name? Even if you don't have your own business yet, imagine for a minute that it has appeared. What would you call it? Options do not immediately come to mind, but the name of a company is not just words or an abbreviation. They must have a meaning, and it must be easy to remember and instantly put on the ear.

It happens that organizations change their name, what could be the reason? Any large organization has a dedicated position or a whole department working on advertising and promotion. If for some reason there is a decline in sales of goods or services, or initially it is not possible to gain the desired popularity among consumers, first of all they pay attention to the quality of products, assortment, conduct a survey of buyers. When such actions do not give a result, in order to identify the cause, a survey is conducted among consumers. Often the result of such a survey is the unpopularity of the name or the difficulty of its perception. A person seems to want to buy a desired thing or order a service, but cannot remember where to turn to. The same difficulty usually lies in a phone number that is not remembered. In this case, good old advertising and complete rebranding (changing the name and style of the company) come to the rescue.

In order not to bring the matter to such a difficult situation, it is better to initially try as much as possible over the title. Gradually, the range of sonorous names for popular lines of business is getting smaller. The possibilities of the language are not limited, and registering a foreign name in Russian is a new "trick" of modern entrepreneurs. While this is not prohibited by law, especially if such a name is "encrypted" with the help of additional elements - extra letters, numbers.

If the name doesn't come to mind

We are not all creative people, and in order not to waste precious time and not puzzle over the name, we can simplify the task and contact a fashionable naming agency. This will require a certain budget.

With the popularization of business, start-ups and other personal endeavors, it became necessary to have firms offering services to create "names" and logos. The people working there know better than others how to come up with a brand name. Turning to a quality agency, an entrepreneur receives several options "at the exit", from which he independently chooses to his taste. Previously, he draws up a short questionnaire, which indicates the type of activity, the desired data or letters / numbers in the name and other important aspects.

Online name generators work in a similar way. It is enough to type a query in any browser "how to come up with a company name examples", and the search engine will immediately display a list of popular generators. Such programs function automatically, according to the written scheme of work. It is also difficult to choose the one you need from the proposed options, because the generator is based on the data you provided, without studying the relevance of the market and other nuances. Most of the names will turn out to be inappropriate, changing the generator will not help, they work on approximately the same principles.

The advantage of automatic systems is the lack of payment, however, naming agencies provide guarantees when creating a company name. In the question of how to choose the right company name, they do not just give out automatic variations based on the collected data, but present options supported by market research. Advertising analytics can show which consonance of symbols is more memorable, with which the name of the organization should be associated, etc. Using all the knowledge in the field of marketing, the specialist creates several variants of the brand name and logo, shows them to the client. Not everyone understands the intricacies of marketing, so even when placing an order for naming, you need to know the basics of it.

In this article, we will show you how to choose a business idea from the list or how to come up with a business idea from scratch.

We will not offer a list of ideas here, but you can see our suggestions in the article on current business ideas.

This article provides techniques to help you decide which business is best for you, in the market that exists and in the place where you are. These techniques are suitable both for developing an original idea, and for choosing one idea from the existing list of potential business ideas, or for choosing a franchise.

And at the end of the article, I will answer a few common questions about how to choose a business idea.

Which is better, an original idea or a copy?

So, which is better, take and copy a ready-made idea, or come up with something of your own, completely unique and original?

In our opinion, both options are appropriate. In any case, it is important to understand who will be your target consumer, what is your competitive strategy, how you will promote the product - read more in our material on how to achieve business success.

Well, remember that if you copy an idea, you still cannot copy absolutely everything 100%. All the same, you will have to bring something original to someone else's idea. There are cases when an entrepreneur works for some time on a franchise, and then leaves the franchisor and creates his own project according to the same patterns, but in these cases he has to change and build some things himself.

On the other hand, if you come up with a completely original idea, it will be too difficult for you to come up with absolutely every element in the value chain yourself. Look at other businesses, think about which projects have a similar audience, a similar market to you, and, if possible, steal the best ideas and practices from them.

Is a business idea really important?

I would also like to briefly touch on the question of how important a business idea is?

The fact is that I know many people who either grabbed onto one cool idea that they really want to implement, but they absolutely have no opportunity to do it (I myself have several business ideas , which I cannot yet implement, I just keep them in my collection of ideas for now). Often these guys make presentations and go to investors for years trying to raise money, instead of starting a business that they can finance.

How to come up with an idea for your business, startup - ways, sources of business ideas

We need a pencil and a piece of paper.

• Record 3 of your hobbies,
• Record your skills,
• Record your current occupation,
• Record what your inner circle is engaged: relatives, friends, acquaintances,
• A strange question, but what would you be doing now if you did not need to make money?
• Read our expanding list business of ideas - perhaps you will find something for yourself + ideas for startups.

These are 6 options that can push you towards an idea. It was promised 7, so:

Synthesis

It's easier if I tell you by examples. Let's say on the 5th point your answer is to shoot a movie. And the 3rd or 4th point, well, let it be work at a pipe rolling plant. Ideas?

• Make a movie about the plant,
• Make a movie about how pipes are made
• Make a movie about the people who work in the plant, that make pipes.

Discovery films about doing things are very popular. We removed it - we put it on YouTube, we make money on it. Business too. True, one video will not be enough, but that's another question. Yes, millions can be made on this, examples.

Here I will say one more thing, on point 5. Do not expect that you will once earn a lot of money and be able to do what you really want. Take action now. If you want to do charity work - nothing prevents you from giving part of your income to funds, and on weekends to volunteer for a couple of hours in different organizations. If you want to make films - shoot, for an hour a day, you can allocate a hobby for this, shoot, experiment, put it on YouTube. You don't have to wait, you have to do, otherwise you don't have to wait.

Or instead of filming a movie, you can find buyers for your plant's products and get your percentage of sales.

Thinking about what kind of business to start? The first thing you should pay attention to is the reasons that make you look for a way to start your own business. Why do you need a business? There may be many answers to this question, but only two are correct. A business is needed in order to sell it, or in order to receive dividends from it. Simple and harsh. In the first case, you invest little money, your knowledge and time in the business. In a year or two, you sell a working project for a thousand times more than your investment and go to open the next direction. This scheme is most popular in Internet business. The second method is close to offline business, when you create a working project with a large turnover and receive your share of the turnover every month. In both cases, money plays a key role, any business is created for the sake of money. But there is a pitfall here: your business requires constant attention, especially at the initial stages. If you choose a direction, even profitable, but causing you boredom or disgust, you will not be able to do it for long. Therefore, the selection of an idea for a business comes to the fore, but not one that will bring millions, but banally one that you want to do.

Browse your own resources

Any business at its start “eats up” resources: money, time, effort. Before you start, you need to understand what resources you have.

There are two ways: start a business with a massive infusion of funds, or get by with modest capital. In the first case, you can immediately reach a decent turnover, invest in promoting your product or service, feel more stable during sales downturns and out of season.

This is understandable: a financial safety cushion can keep almost any project afloat. For example, having invested about 15 million rubles in opening a fast food restaurant under a popular franchise, in the first month an entrepreneur can earn an amount of 2 million rubles or more.

The business will pay off in a year, and the rest of the time will consistently bring good money.

There is a pitfall here. Look at the end goal right away. If you later want to sell your business, then the price will be quite high, and your percentage of it is minimal. Nobody will buy a promoted restaurant for 50 million rubles, it's easier to open a new one.

However, not everyone has free 10-15 million rubles, which they have nowhere to put. Often, a novice entrepreneur is limited in resources, and he needs to choose the second option.

It's quite possible to open your own business with an average monthly salary in your pocket. Only in this case the entrepreneur pays for the missing funds with his time and ingenuity.

You have to work eighteen hours a day, come up with various solutions to emerging problems, look for workarounds, maneuver, negotiate and try to earn something at the same time. This type of activity is similar to the struggle for survival, where the most cunning and fastest wins.

An entrepreneur will need a lot of time and effort to compensate for the missing start-up capital. But in this case, no matter what model a businessman chooses: sale or withdrawal of funds from circulation, he will still be in the black. If he survives.

Once you understand how much money you are willing to invest in a business, you will take the next step towards defining your idea.

A useful tool is one that solves a problem. One day, someone got angry that they could not connect two planks, and so a nail appeared, and then a tool for using it - a hammer. The hardest part about creating a good idea is that it should be close to you. It is important not just to find a problem, but to identify the one that you would like to fix.

Create a "problem list"

Carry a small notebook in your pocket and write down any problems you encounter. For example, “it pisses me off to sweep the floors,” “I don’t like waiting for a taxi long,” “I can’t pay the rent,” or “I am annoyed by hotels. There are many problems in the world, big and small. Some saw them as opportunities, and the result was such successful companies and products as robot vacuum cleaner, Uber, etc. All of them were born thanks to the idea.

Solve everyday problems

Ten years ago, when I still lacked the courage to start entrepreneurship, I had a great idea. I was living in Wisconsin then, which is a very cold state. It was winter and the snow was knee-deep. I tried to warm up the car so that I could scrape the ice off the windshield. Then I thought: what if it was possible to cover the windshield with something for the night, so that later not to clean the ice with freezing hands? But I never did anything to realize my idea. I ran into a real problem and came up with a solution, but did not try to make a prototype to test it, although it would cost me less than $ 50 to create one. I recently noticed on the market similar products to what I came up with. I decided to save $ 50 and ended up missing out on the opportunity to turn a great idea into a successful business.

Go through your list. Which problem annoys you most? How can you fix it? If nothing good occurs to you, move on to the next one. Make blueprints, prototypes and test them for yourself. Refine your solution. First of all, you must solve your own problem, and then - the rest. If the problem is general and affects a large audience, then people will easily understand that they need your product. This is how unicorns like Uber and Airbnb came into being.

Find the problem you really care about

Business is not easy. You should enjoy your work, and the problem being solved should worry you: this is the only way you can sell your idea to others - literally and figuratively. You need to spark interest in your idea from others.

Once again - what problem annoys you every day? What drives you crazy? It is with this that the development of the idea should begin. An interest in an issue will help you get through the hardships of building a business. Yes, there will be difficult days, but how many wonderful days if you love your idea!

Show problem

Some successful startups are due to problems that no one noticed. This is innovation. Many entrepreneurs can't come up with a good idea because they don't even consider it. To understand what you can do, you need to constantly learn and broaden your horizons. I work in real estate and I can solve a lot of problems because I have learned a lot. I know the obvious boundaries and love to go beyond them - that's what great startups usually do. You will have to push the boundaries of what you love.

Last but not least, how accurately and fully you managed to identify the unmet needs of others. It is not difficult to start a project based on your own ideas about the need and demand for a particular service or product. But he will only be successful when he deals with specific problems pending solution.