How to Find a Business Idea

At the beginning of 2019, I started becoming interested in macroeconomics and business. I liked the thought of starting my own business, so I began looking for sources of information. Where do all of us look for information most easily? Exactly—YouTube. Today, it is the most accessible source we have.

Somehow, that is where I came across a few entrepreneurs—or at least self-proclaimed entrepreneurs—who explained that you cannot build a business because you do not have all the necessary skills. Their message appealed to me, partly because I could indeed admit to not having any skills. Most often, they advocated an unusual exercise. They asked you to imagine yourself five or ten years into the future and to picture the kind of person you would become. I was supposed to visualize the skills I would need then and start learning them now. Somehow, what they were saying made sense to me at the time.

After all, a CEO needs people skills, needs to know how to hire, as well as how and why to fire someone. They need technical knowledge of the field in which they work. According to my logic, I only needed to find the industry I wanted to enter, work on developing myself in that direction, and then the business would come naturally.

That is the greatest piece of nonsense I have ever heard in my life. The reality is that it is complete bullshit. First of all, my projection of what the future will bring is not accurate. As a result, from where I am today, I cannot see which skills I will need. It is like a mechanic trying to prepare the tools needed to repair a car before knowing what kind of car they will have to repair—or what needs to be repaired in the first place.

The reality was that I was seeking advice from entrepreneurs who stood on the same riverbank as I did. We were both looking across the river and trying to guess how to cross it. Perhaps their reasoning sounded better only because they had been looking at the opposite bank for longer than I had, but that did not mean they were capable of reaching it. Would it not have been more logical to seek the advice of someone who had actually crossed the water to the other side?

No matter how much I thought about a business idea, nothing seemed to come to mind, while the success I believed was guaranteed kept me waiting. Once again, waiting for the perfect business idea is a stupid approach. First of all, the perfect idea does not exist. What exists is how much you care about something. If you truly care about a cause and want to work for it, you probably have a better chance of succeeding than if you do not care. Second, if all we do is wait and we never act, we will never gain the necessary experience. Then, when we really do have a good idea, we will not be able to recognize it.

Another relatively well-known problem is that the higher their IQ, the more entrepreneurs can suffer from paralysis in execution. They remain stuck, analyzing again and again why a business would not work. People with a more modest IQ get started and do something without asking themselves so often whether it will work. This does not mean that only stupid people will manage to accomplish something. It means that intelligence most likely works inversely to the ability to start a startup.

Similarly, people with intellectual jobs are exposed to additional self-sabotage because they tend to be arrogant and conceited. They believe that simply because they are doctors or lawyers, they can run a business much better than someone who has completed only eight years of school. Once again, this is one of the biggest lies. Most often, they do a much worse job.

At the time, I believed that you could not build a new McDonald’s because too many already existed, and that every inventor had simply been lucky enough to develop something at the right time. This way of thinking is not only false; it also limits you because it prevents you from acting. Who would want to start a project while knowing from the very beginning that it had no chance of succeeding?

For a long time, I failed to understand that you can build any business you want. You need only three crucial elements, without which it will not work.

A universal problem you want to solve . . .

First, you need a universal problem that you want to solve. Problems fall into two categories: general and specific. A general problem affects the entire community. It usually costs little money to solve, but competitors can replicate the solution very easily. A bakery is an example of such a problem. People will always need bread, and the work involved in solving this problem is relatively easy to copy. A specialized problem is, for example, the need to bake bread in a professional oven that improves production times and reduces expenses. Here, competition is already lower because not everyone is technically capable of producing such goods. Building this kind of company usually requires more technical support and greater funding, but the result—or the profit margin—also tends to be higher. Therefore, the first step in laying the foundations of a business is to identify a problem in society and determine whether it is a general or a specific problem. Let us do an exercise in which we identify a few problems in our society and see how varied they can be.

First, society is becoming divided, with less and less direct contact between people. One solution would be a system that brings people together and gives them the opportunity to interact socially. This idea is becoming increasingly important for children. Because of social media and computers, children no longer spend as much time outside interacting with other children.

Another problem is that access to healthcare is beginning to decline because people have less and less access to doctors, especially family doctors. In most healthcare systems, family doctors are the gateway through which patients can access healthcare regularly. Any solution that increases the coverage provided by family doctors could work, whether it involves an online presence, video conferences, or travel to improvised mobile centers.

Another current problem is housing. It is not necessarily that there are not enough homes, but that the homes available on the market are becoming increasingly difficult for young people to access. In the 1990s, the average age of a first-time buyer was approximately 25, while today it has already reached 40. Any solution through which we help young people become homeowners could work. This might involve constructing buildings with shared spaces and smaller apartments, or reinventing the idea of housing so that the role of a home at night changes during the day.

Another problem is the energy crisis expected in the future. Most systems today are beginning to consume more and more electricity. The problem is not the electricity being consumed, but rather the way it is transported. In most countries, the power grid is underdeveloped compared with what would be required for the total electrification of the car fleet. A much more logical idea would be to reduce our reliance on large power plants and introduce electricity generation as close to the home as possible. Ideally, every home would have its own power generator, and it would use renewable energy.

I am convinced that, if we took some time, we could identify even more problems, and some of them are going to be specific only to some regions or countries. But as we can see, the world does not lack problems that need to be solved. This is partly because every solution usually causes a problem. For example, Tesla solved part of the problem of electrifying cars, but it caused a new problem. There aren't enough shops to look after the cars, as most mechanics are trained to repair combustion engines. If we found a way to build a power generator for every home, then this would lead to new problems. As long as we are willing to understand and solve the issue, we will have opportunities. The best part is that we don't even have to solve the problems ourselves. Just by building tools that aid in solving them, we could do enough. Don't know how to repair electric cars? Just build a platform where we all can shop for such an individual. No skills needed, but still taking part in solving the problem.

A problem you care about . . .

The second important element in laying the foundations of a business is that you must care about the problem you find. Let's say we can identify 1,000 problems in our society that need fixes; we should only focus on those we truly care about. If you are not genuinely interested in it, you will have no chance of becoming successful. And here it is critical to be honest and admit if you don't give a fuck.

The logic is simple: if you truly care about something, you will work much harder than your competitors and will therefore have an advantage as a company.

At one point, my wife was looking at ways of improving the quality of children’s clothes. Her idea was that most of the cheap clothes worn by 99% of children today are petroleum-based. In other words, we dress our children in plastic bags and gasoline. The logic was to make natural fibers more readily available to parents in the form of clothes that would not be expensive or difficult to maintain. Even though it is a noble idea, it would be the wrong business for me personally, for the simple reason that I don’t really care about that.

Imagine the motivation someone has when opening a restaurant. Most people want to sell someone a pizza, own a luxurious restaurant that they can show off on social media, and make their first million within the first 12 months. The reality is that most people who open a restaurant don’t really care about shit, which is why most end up closing.

When you find something you truly care about, you will work for hours without even realizing it. You will not see it as a business, but as your little project—your little baby. Day and night, you will try to improve it little by little and offer products that solve your customers’ problems as effectively as possible. This very drive will differentiate you from your competitors. Do you want to invent a new Tesla? You can do that, of course. Just think about the problem that is not currently being addressed by the automotive market and why that problem matters so much to you.

Stay focused . . .

The third element is, of course, the work and sacrifices you make in order to succeed. I would mention something important here, however. There is a feedback loop that can help us identify whether you are on the right track. In any case, your business idea requires work because the problem on which it is based has to be solved somehow. When someone on the outside asks how much time you devoted to this business or problem during the week, your answer should automatically be at least 60 hours. If you do not dedicate all your time, day and night, you will not be able to achieve anything. This is why you differentiate yourself from your competitors: you care—they only want earnings; you put in the hours and improve the concept—they slack and ride the wave as much as possible.

But this is also where the feedback loop comes in. Although you spend dozens of hours every week working on the new company, it should not feel like a chore. If you do not feel the hours you work and you have fun doing it, then you have hit the jackpot. You have entered the Bermuda Triangle, and you will not get out without becoming a millionaire. You have found a problem and you are trying to find a solution. But because the subject is close to your heart and you genuinely care about it, you will ignore the first 100 solutions that are garbage and continue working hard. Somehow, at some point, you will solve it, and this will make you millions. Throughout this process, you will not feel the work or the hours you have lost. You will think only about how great it was to solve that problem.

Every interview for a new job should begin with “Why do you care?” and “What kind of problems did you solve at your last job?” The rest is just bullshit. This is the true entrepreneurial mindset as I understand it today. It has nothing to do with the “future self” and all that bullshit about the skills I do not have. In fact, as you have seen, the skills I have today barely matter because, in the process of building something, you will acquire new skills as you adapt to new problems.

School does not teach us to think this way. We are taught only to work for someone who does think this way. That is my lesson for today: in order to be successful, you need to find a problem that you really care about and solve it. Everything can be summed up in one sentence. If you cannot find any good business idea, it only means you haven't found something to care about. No worries. Just keep looking.

Think again about all the YouTube business influencers who show how they make money with laundromats or something else. Would you care about something like that? Why do they present one idea as something we should all do? I, for one, don't give a fuck about laundromats. With my knowledge now, I would never listen to any advice about what I should start. I would seek expert advice once I figure out what I want to do.