Dan Martell - September 14, 2015


How To Choose The Right Project or Business Idea


Episode Stats

Length

4 minutes

Words per Minute

220.1258

Word Count

1,050

Sentence Count

34


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
00:00:00.500 How to choose the right project.
00:00:02.200 I don't know if you're like me, but I've probably got about
00:00:04.500 50 different domains for projects that I'd like to start.
00:00:08.300 And at some point I need to decide which one am I going to
00:00:11.300 pursue, you know?
00:00:12.200 I think that's the biggest challenge as an entrepreneur that
00:00:14.000 has a lot of ideas, a lot of creative juices, is we can start
00:00:17.900 a lot of things, but at some point you're going to have to pick
00:00:20.300 the right one.
00:00:20.800 And what I want to share with you guys today is three strategies
00:00:23.300 that I use to figure out which projects I work.
00:00:26.500 Now, I've been fortunate enough to have built, you know, two
00:00:29.200 venture-backed companies, but in the beginning
00:00:31.600 of starting those, I actually had about two or three
00:00:33.800 other projects that I was doing in parallel,
00:00:36.200 and then I eventually chose the one that became
00:00:38.800 that startup.
00:00:39.800 You know, recently, Clarity, my last company was acquired,
00:00:41.900 but when I started that, I had Photovino
00:00:44.200 and another app called Secret Sender.
00:00:46.200 And I tell you that, guys, to give you some context,
00:00:48.300 but I totally get what you're going through.
00:00:50.400 If you're currently working on multiple projects,
00:00:52.900 I've been there, and these three strategies will really
00:00:54.600 help you pick the right ones.
00:00:56.200 The first one is, what trend is going on in the industry
00:01:00.400 that makes your idea the right one to pursue?
00:01:04.400 You know, like when I'm thinking of companies
00:01:06.280 I've invested in, as an angel investor,
00:01:07.840 I've invested in about 30 plus companies,
00:01:09.780 and the question I love to ask the founders is, why now?
00:01:12.380 Why that idea now in this market?
00:01:15.720 So think about it for your idea and your project.
00:01:18.520 What is it about the current state of trends?
00:01:21.900 And if you haven't seen Mary Meeker's internet trends,
00:01:24.120 she does it every year, so just search
00:01:25.660 Internet Trends, Mir Meeker.
00:01:27.860 She gives the data to support the different trends.
00:01:30.160 So you want to kind of figure out what's going on in the
00:01:32.460 market that you can map to that your project or idea feels like
00:01:36.260 it's going to be an upward trend.
00:01:38.960 Because it doesn't matter, you know, if you're 2008 and starting
00:01:41.960 a social media website, if you follow or if you kind of rode
00:01:45.360 that trend line, you know, high tides raise all boats, you would
00:01:48.960 have done well and I was fortunate to start Flowtown in
00:01:51.460 2008, a social marketing tool, and we got acquired in 2011
00:01:55.560 Because we are part of that trend, that whole thing,
00:01:57.720 the whole market was going up, your idea, your project
00:02:00.600 in that, and that's the way you wanna do it.
00:02:02.560 So why now, what trend?
00:02:04.400 Answer that question, that's step one
00:02:05.960 of figuring out which project to filter through.
00:02:07.940 If that one looks good, the second one is
00:02:10.300 what domain expertise do you have that's unique?
00:02:14.440 What are uniquely qualified, what experience do you have
00:02:17.600 previously that makes you, this is the other question asked,
00:02:20.800 the right person, why you?
00:02:23.600 Why should you be the one solving this problem?
00:02:26.120 What have you done in your life?
00:02:27.400 Where have you worked?
00:02:28.340 What experience do you have?
00:02:29.780 What hobbies do you have?
00:02:31.160 You know, I still remember the conversation I had
00:02:33.040 with Laura Fitton.
00:02:33.880 She was the founder of a company called 140,
00:02:35.940 which was back in the day, I think it was 2008, 2009,
00:02:38.900 the app store for Twitter.
00:02:41.560 And you know, when you think about unfair advantages,
00:02:44.380 here's a person that not only had a huge following on Twitter,
00:02:47.680 but she owned 140.com, which is a pretty amazing domain.
00:02:51.220 She just finished writing the book, Twitter for Dummies,
00:02:54.920 so super deep domain knowledge and huge audience and reach.
00:02:59.520 And when you ask yourself, who better in the world,
00:03:01.820 somebody more passionate than Laura
00:03:03.820 or more domain experience,
00:03:05.420 you couldn't have found anybody to execute on that problem
00:03:07.820 and that's why a couple years later
00:03:08.920 they got acquired by HubSpot.
00:03:10.120 So I share that with you guys because I really think
00:03:12.620 that you need to ask yourself, what have you done
00:03:14.920 and why are you the right person to solve this problem?
00:03:16.920 And then the third thing, if you get through
00:03:18.120 those first two filters, the third is,
00:03:20.620 What are you most passionate about?
00:03:22.180 I know we talk about passion, but here's why.
00:03:24.860 You know, when you think about projects,
00:03:26.620 the one, Steve Jobs said this best.
00:03:28.360 He says, you know, it's not about passion
00:03:30.960 just because you wanna be excited about going to work,
00:03:32.460 but it's about passion because when things just seem
00:03:35.100 like they're not gonna work out,
00:03:36.400 when the whole world is against you,
00:03:37.800 when every idea seems to fail,
00:03:39.640 it's the ones that are most passionate about the idea
00:03:41.480 that are gonna pursue it, that are gonna persist,
00:03:43.840 and those are the ones that are gonna have success.
00:03:46.240 It's almost like, you know, are you crazy?
00:03:48.720 Are you a little insane?
00:03:49.780 because from the outside world, from normal people,
00:03:52.140 your pursuit looks a little crazy.
00:03:54.960 But for me, the reason why it's important to have that
00:03:57.180 is because it should energize you.
00:03:59.220 You know, if you have three different projects,
00:04:00.720 one's kind of like a really great idea,
00:04:02.860 but you're not really passionate about it.
00:04:04.400 The other one, maybe on the outside,
00:04:06.400 it doesn't look like a great idea,
00:04:07.540 but for you and your alignment and your vision
00:04:09.640 and what you want to do in the world,
00:04:10.840 it is the one that gets you energized and excited
00:04:13.180 and jumping out of bed in the morning.
00:04:14.680 That's the one you're going to want to follow.
00:04:16.340 So those are the three areas.
00:04:18.240 The what trend, why now?
00:04:21.320 You know, what domain expertise you have, why you?
00:04:24.720 Or what are you most passionate about
00:04:26.520 or which one gets you most energized?
00:04:28.880 Those are my three strategies for choosing
00:04:30.840 what projects to pursue.
00:04:32.880 Hope you found that useful.
00:04:33.840 Please like this video and leave a comment below
00:04:36.080 and let me know what projects exciting you right now.
00:04:38.440 I'd love to hear from you guys.
00:04:39.360 Below in the comments, I wanna challenge you all
00:04:41.840 to live a bigger life and a bigger business
00:04:44.520 and I'll see you guys next Monday.