Felt needs are startup opportunities

For a venture to be entrepreneurial, it must meet a felt need within a population.

Many start-up companies are congratulated for their entrepreneurial spirit, and yet the majority of them never supply a good or service that meets a felt need. Sometimes this is because they have an idea that few if any feel is necessary; other times it’s due to a failure to execute the delivery of the idea to the people who need it. While it may be an idea isn’t recognized as valuable; in fact, it may even be considered worthless, at some point in its development it must be recognized by people who can use it. If it is not, then it remains only a good idea, not an entrepreneurial venture.

This is important because a good idea does not always equate with an entrepreneurial venture. The resources required to create value are numerous, and include the ability to: produce the idea, make the idea accessible to its users, and solve problems that arise, to name a few. This realization tempers the excitement of identifying a potential business, where the idea may be put into large-scale production before it’s been proven in the marketplace. This was the case of so-and-so.

For example, our sales team will at times bring us ideas for software solutions they think will be helpful for our clients. We build the solution, but often people don’t benefit. This has most often been because few know it exists. All agreed it was a great idea at the time, and perhaps it could have been valuable to many of our clients, but its value was never realized. We’ve had more success gauging the value of a solution by developing a proof-of-concept which a subset of our clients may try and provide feedback on. But we do not yet have a measure of whether it adds value to our clients, or whether it was only a good idea.