May 2017
Beginner
208 pages
4h 54m
English
Content preview from Startup Opportunities, 2nd Edition
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
CHAPTER 3Opportunities
At some point in your life you had an entrepreneurial epiphany. You suddenly came up with an idea that you couldn’t stop thinking about. You might have believed it was an idea that could change the world and bring you fame and fortune. It might be something that you wanted to create to solve a problem you had, or it could have been something you were completely fascinated by and obsessed with.
Throughout history, whenever there is a problem or an unmet need, humans have tried to create something to provide a solution. The academic literature talks about these unmet needs as being the result of “suboptimal solutions,” a status quo that leaves the user or customer unsatisfied. The telegraph was invented to address the fact that the postal service was a suboptimal solution for rapid communication and addressed the unmet need of instant communication over large distances. Airplanes provided a solution to suboptimal long voyages by ship. Facebook aggregated and improved on several different suboptimal solutions for sharing information with your friends and family.
The Four Criteria for an Opportunity
All opportunities start with an idea. While ideas are at the heart of all opportunities, for an idea to be an opportunity, it must be actionable (i.e., an idea that can’t be executed isn’t an opportunity) and have the following characteristics:1
- The idea is durable: It is not a fad and will last long enough to allow it to be monetized.
- The idea is timely:
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.