Has it ever occurred to you that you thought of an idea and then forgot about it only to find out a company raising funds 6 months later? How did you react in that scenario?
Do you have regret that you didn’t take a bet on an idea?
byu/theintelligentbuyer inEntrepreneur
Posted by theintelligentbuyer
14 Comments
I literally have had this to me about 100x, even after building out the ideas. That’s the problem of being a designer, I designed whatever came to mind.
If I had to start over, with minimal funding, it would be knowing how to market and get products to market.
When I was a teen, I really wanted to sell mystery boxes. Specifically beauty products cause I knew so much about it. I’m a girl after all
My parents didn’t buy my idea. I didn’t even have a credit card yet. (I was authorized under parents’ card but I can’t be spending like that). Couldn’t do the idea.
It PISSED me off when Allure, Boxycharm, and FabFitFun became fucking huge
I met the Boxycharm CEO too. It really infuriated me hearing how he started cause I would’ve been on the same path
Yes. *Countless* times over the past decade or two.
I keep eyes on them.
9/10 they end up failing, for the exact reasons that I gave up on the idea in the first place. Even if they had successful seed rounds, doesn’t really matter in the long run.
1/10 end up working out, and it’s always been because they had access to resources that I didn’t. So even if I tried my best, still wouldn’t have worked, and it’s not failure on my part.
It’s not something that weighs heavily on me. Great ideas are a dime a dozen, it’s the execution that really matters.
how about this.
i made a product that was a first of its kind.. it got initial traction and lots of attention but i didnt have the funds to properly run the business fulltime and I didnt know how to take that chance or raise capital.
now 6 years later there is a company who has a worse product but is doing very well
Early 2000s when I was undergraduate, we enter a business idea competition where we submitted an idea to create a website to connect tourist to taxi drivers as it was a hassle for tourists to hail taxis in my country.
During the pitching session, the judges gave the comments which implied this was a stupid idea.
If we go ahead with this idea, we could have been the spin off of Uber and Grab which hadn’t existed that time.
You didn’t come up with that idea. That idea’s time has just come.
No.
The only reason you did not build it is that you could not. whatever the good or bad reason may be, dwelling on the past will not help you to catch the next big idea and bring it into the world.
Everyone has has this happen. Odd how that works. Only a small small percent actually do the idea.
Plenty. Family members have dissuaded me a lot in the past and I later found out my intuition was correct. They were well-meaning, but they were also wrong and overbearing. I learned from that and now try to move in silence because they can’t sit there and gaslight you if you have already achieved success.
Very nearly did. When I started my first ever business a couple of years back I was too scared to invest £50 into ads (minimum you could spend) and decided I wasn’t even going to do it. It was a lot of money to me then. I had a product and had bult a website and everything but just chickened out at the end, up until my friend convinced me to do it. So glad I did because it was the start of my entrepreneurial journey and made a grand in profit off of it overall. So now I have learnt from that and always take risks because I truly believe thats what separates great businessmen to normal people, being their ability to take risk
When I was a small child in the nineties I was confused why we could only order pizza and Chinese food delivered. What if I wanted tacos? Sushi? Burgers? I remember distinctly saying “there needs to be a company that delivers whatever food you want” and now we have all the different services for exactly that. Obviously I couldn’t do anything as a child, but I remember thinking about it back then
I bet 100 people had the same idea. Or 1000. 90%didnt try. 90% of those that tried, failed. An idea is great, but close to worthless. You have to execute and grow that idea, hitting constant problems, constantly having to learn about business, marketing, accounting, sales, copy writing, social media etc etc.
Back in the mid 90’s, I was driving my pickup on I10, passing downtown Phoenix at dusk. In my brain popped this idea…
“There’s so many random questions. I wish there was a place I could go, to ask a simple, random question and get a reasonable result.”
But I couldn’t figure out how to make a business out of the idea. Would people call a phone number, and pay a $1 for simple answers? If the solution was complex, would you charge different? How’d you ensure people didn’t dispute the bill, if they didn’t like the answer provided?
I thought I was onto something, so I chatted with all my friends about it, trying to figure this thing out. Couldn’t. Moved on with life.
Years later, my friends would tease me… “Hey, remember that idea you had? That’s google!”
i have checked a domain name idea which is worth approx $4 mil and also available to purchase . but not have funds to bet.