Good Ideas Don’t Build Businesses

“Ideas are easy. It’s execution of ideas that really separates the sheep from the goats.” Sue Graftan

A couple of years ago I came across a book titled, Ideas Ruled The World, written by Sam Adeyemi, a leadership consultant. I was so excited about the book. I believe I read it in a sitting. I thought that once I had an idea I was made. Also, the idea must be a good one.

We started praying and searching for good ideas. Any idea that comes to mind and that we adjudge should be good can be turned into good business. We believed that if we could just have a great idea like Jacob or Joseph in the Bible, our lives would be made and money would continually flow to us.

Many believed this fairy tale. They got ideas and resigned from their place of work to pursue their ideas and ended up mortgaging their savings trying to rule the world through their ideas. In the end, they discovered that ideas may be the seed, but they are not worth that much. Ideas are neutral; neither good nor bad. However, what you do with them is what matters.

Do you think only Mark Zuckerberg had an idea of a social platform like Facebook? No. I believe there are many people globally who have similar ideas. God (or the universe, as you choose to believe) is generous with ideas. He gives everyone equal access to ideas, but what people do with the idea is all that matters.

The idea of selling books online when you have physical bookstores like Barn & Noble, Borders, and many others must have been a bad idea at the time. Yet, Jeff Bezos was able to transform that bad idea into something great.

Who wanted to watch news 24 hours a day? I believe no one. Still, Ted Turner came up and forged ahead with the idea of CNN, a 24-hours news broadcast station on satellite. CNN has been a phenomenal success. This tells us that there is something more important that makes an idea come alive.

There are startup founders who are afraid to share their ideas with you without you first signing an NDA. Ideas are not restricted to one person. When you are thinking of an idea, understand that there are thousands if not millions of others thinking of the same idea. We are all connected. If you do nothing with your idea, someone else will.

We must therefore not celebrate an idea, but the execution. Understanding this was what made Steve Jobs say, “We may not be the first to the market, but we certainly will be the best.” Ideas are everywhere. They are a dime a dozen. Execution, what you do with the idea is everything.

Money-Makes-Idea-Work Mindset

I started my first business at the age of 29. I had an idea and someone supplied the money. I believe that the marriage of an idea and money will result in success. But that wasn’t the case. We became addicted to money like a junkie. Instead of bootstrapping, we were looking for more money to have a fix. We felt if we could just have more money injected into the business, it would work. That wasn’t the case.

We had to close shop finally when we could get funding. This is exactly what many startups that closed down in 2023 experienced. The founders believed that all they needed was money to make their ideas work. I am not saying money isn’t important when it comes to executing an idea; far from it. What I am saying is that money isn’t very important. It’s not the most important thing.

Don’t invest in a founder with the mindset that their ideas can only work when funds are injected into their startup. In most cases, their focus is how to throw money around rather than make the idea work. A CEO, who also was the founder, of a startup that closed down, paid himself $15,000 monthly.

Most startup founders in Nigeria are after money once they have an idea. Most founders must understand that money primarily doesn’t make ideas work. For an idea to work, many factors have to come into the game to make the idea work.

Do You Invest In Ideas or People?

I once asked an investor what he looks at to invest in a company. He said he looks at both the idea and the person with the idea. He explained that he needs the idea to be something he can believe in and also the person behind the startup to be someone who is disciplined and committed to making the idea a reality.

However, after studying businesses that work and those that fail, I believe that it is best to invest in the person with an idea rather than the idea itself. Jeff Bezos had lots of ideas that had flopped. Yet, investors kept giving him money. There must be something about him as a person that makes him reliable, dependable, and investible.

I once read an article that mentioned how Dangote is the right person to invest in when it comes to big business in Nigeria. This means that whatever idea Dangote comes up with, he can certainly have investors running to him. When the world is talking about reducing its carbon footprint and moving from fossil fuel to renewable, Dangote decided to build the largest refinery in the world. Isn’t that crazy? Who will want to fund something that will be extinct soon? Again, he got the funding to make his idea work.

Founders should not try to sell their ideas but themselves. Entrepreneurs can move an idea from a place of low value to a place of high value. Grow and position yourself as a person who makes ideas work. These are the people who rule the world.

Idea and Business Model Which Determines Business Success

An idea without a business model is as good as stillborn. If you want to invest in a business, understand the business model of the business. Business plans are built on assumptions, which makes them unpredictable. A business plan may not survive the first contact with the market. Asking founders for business plans to invest in is just like trying to catch smoke.

Ask for their business model. You can’t just wake up and develop a business model like you will a business plan. You don’t research to build a business model; you experiment. You have to test the assumptions you have made. When some of your assumptions are invalidated, you iterate or you pivot. However, when the assumptions are validated, you scale.

Every business model must have a customer acquisition system and a Go-To-Market Strategy. My first experience building a business model changed the way I view an idea. I can share the ideas I have but then we may have different business models.

Take for instance; after I shared the idea of an Emergency Response System for healthcare in Nigeria using AI, I noticed more founders are beginning to look into the possibility of building a startup in the healthcare sector. This is great and welcome. However, just having an idea and getting funding doesn’t necessarily mean the idea will succeed. They need to build a business model that works.

We can have the same idea but a different business model and the business will still work. Uber and Bolt operate in the same market space. They are the same idea, but they have different business model, which enables their idea to succeed.

Having a great idea and putting together a great team doesn’t compensate for a bad business model. With A-list players but no business model, you will spend more time trying to make the team work together than building a business model that works.

Which is more important between Idea and Customer Needs?

When we elevate an idea to become the king of a business, we make customers' needs subjective. We then build technologies that are based on the idea and not the needs of the customers. Hardly will you have ideas that start with the customer needs and experience.

We had an idea for healthcare. We were outsiders. We wanted to build a product that will make healthcare accessible and innovative in Nigeria. We felt our idea would work until we got into the healthcare sector and started looking at it with the mindset of the patient and medical professionals. We could have developed a tech and got funding without knowing the needs of the hospital. The moment we begin to understand our customers, we discover our ideas are worthless; it lack understanding of the customer needs.

Studying the book, Jobs to Be Done, by Tony Ulwick helped us to understand that ideas are worthless if they don’t align with customer needs. Understanding the customers and the outcome they seek is vital to making an idea work. You could start with an idea, but abandon it along the way. That is a pivot.

It is our plan in Engineers Without Borders Nigeria to raise engineers who can make ideas work. Want to be one? Join our Design Solutions For Human program.

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