Should You Start with the Idea or with the Company?

A Thought Leader Guest Post from Justin Potts from Medium:

Idea first, startup later.

With all the hype around billion-dollar valuations, acquisitions left and right, and more venture capital than we know what to do with, it’s easy to get excited at the possibility of building something big. 

Of course! Who doesn’t want to join the three comma club? But, it’s all too easy for the idea of becoming wealthy and successful to be a distraction from what you’re actually passionate about.

I’ve built numerous projects — more than I can count, actually. Only a couple of those turned into startups. Only one of those should’ve. In the struggle to build something big and meaningful, I lost sight of what I enjoyed. And, too far into building the company, I realized I was more excited about having an idea, than the idea itself.

When you add the excitement of having a company on top of an idea, it can be harder to gauge your genuine passion for what you’re working on.

The excitement of incorporating, sending emails, building decks, and attempting to raise money (often prematurely, I might add), will wear off eventually. Instead of building, you’re doing busy work. And once you run out of busy work, which happens much quicker than you think, you’re left with the idea itself.

If you start with the idea, rather than start with the company, you can iterate much faster. You’ll quickly realize whether you...

Read the rest of this article at medium.com...

Thanks for this Guest Post and its graphics to Justin Potts, the Co-founder & CEO of Avenify, of Medium.

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