Ok, now that you have a good team in place to implement your idea, you need to estimate/understand the value of your business proposition. Before you start working on your business model, you need to consider the following factors.

Market survey

You should have a clear understanding about whom you are targeting at. Your startup should not create a problem and then try to solve it. Do a market survey among your target audience and get a feel as to whether they are really in need of such a service. Your idea always sounds great to you, but does it to your customer?

Your idea sounds great to you, but does it to your customer?

Ideally, 80-90% of sample set should have a craving for a service like yours and you should see a glow in their eyes when you brief them about the service. That’s when you know, you can strike gold! Initially, it’s better to create a niche market addressing the needs of your product which mainstream providers don’t do.

Customer obsession

Immediately after your team comes your customers. It’s not enough if you just like them, you must be obsessed about them! The moment someone else gives them a better service, they are going to shift. So, never compromise on the quality. Always take their feedback and work on it.

Know your competitors well

Before you jump in, have you done enough research on other players in your domain? Never assume that you are the 1st one to start, it’s most probably not going to be the case. Back in college, I remember meeting venture-capitalists to whom I would proudly say “This is the 1st of it’s kind!“. One of them threw me a simple question – “There are approximately 5 billion websites, are you sure none of them is similar to yours ?” Well, I really did not have an answer to that question. This just means that you need to spend a lot of time researching on similar offerings by other players.

There are approximately 5 billion websites, are you sure none of them is similar to yours

Once done, look at the USP (Unique Selling Proposition) of your product and see how/why is it better than the other offerings. Does it really stand-out ? Do the customers really require it?

Aping it from the west

This is another new trend that has started to catch on people. The moment they find an interesting idea doing well in the west, they think it would do well here too! Am sorry, you are terribly mistaken. Again, it comes to understanding your customers, the demographics and the environment. You need to be a visionary and solve *real* problems. You can’t be an entrepreneur just for the heck of it! Understand your customer problems, build a tool and solve it!