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The most impactful business ideas have an interesting feature in common. They all seem obvious in hindsight.
A website for purchasing products online? Of course such a platform had to emerge at some point (Amazon). A site for uploading videos to share with the world? Everyone would have wanted one eventually (YouTube).
Sending money via your mobile phone in a country with a large unbanked population? Yup, sounds like a slam dunk (bKash).
All these ideas appear quite apparent today. Yet, during their inception the prevailing consensus couldn’t be more different.
When Bezos founded Amazon, analysts did not believe the masses could ever trust the internet with their credit card information. When bKash launched, it was a general sentiment that most Bangladeshis would be uncomfortable transferring their hard-earned money digitally.
A similar premise could be observed in the origins of other industry-reshaping ideas. But upon pouring into this phenomenon, researchers uncovered a fascinating fact – early skepticism was not a barrier to the growth of futuristic, large-scale businesses.
In fact, it actually helped them flourish, by significantly reducing the advent of early competition.
As we just observed, novel ideas do not initially appear to be very attractive. And since most of us are unable to predict future trends, such ideas are usually dismissed in one of two ways.
Either they will be seen as saturated markets already, which was a criticism faced by Google for instance. When they launched, the consensus was that search business was a matured market, and won’t grow much further.
Or, they may say the offering is niche and won’t scale beyond a small segment. Facebook faced such reservations in its early days – it was presumed they would never gain more than a million users (today, they have 3+ billion monthly active users).
Such objections thus ensure minimal competitor interest in the initial years, leading to a relatively blue ocean to play with.
As a result, the founder gets to enjoy two particular benefits. First, the business is able to scale at its own pace, instead of chasing growth-at-all-costs to stay ahead of challengers.
Second, it can build its product carefully through trials and errors, without the threat of fatal consequences, as competition won’t pounce to overtake them.
Both ultimately help the venture build on a formidable foundation, through which they are able to then grow and tidily establish dominance by the time rivals catch up to the opportunity.
And when the market finally takes off, they reap the maximum rewards for their foresight.
Consider the pandemic. When it became clear that people will be confined at their homes for months, unable to visit physical stores, on-demand grocery delivery became one of the hottest verticals in Dhaka. Every week, a new startup kept cropping up in this space.
Where are they now? 99% of those have since closed shop.
And who were the ones best positioned to enjoy this great leap in demand? Chaldal, of course.
Waseem Alim launched this venture at a time when few thought grocery-delivery had much of a market. They had 1 or 2 competitors at best. But they built for a future when it would become a part of many people’s shopping habits.
10 Minute School has a similar story to tell. Ayman Sadiq started his venture long before people thought online education could have a viable market in Bangladesh.
But by the time most competitors understood the potential of this sector, 10 Minute School became a household name. They also capitalized on the pandemic-led boom to grow their user base severalfold.
Therefore, while many founders believe the ideal time to launch an innovative idea is during peak market demand, these ventures credibly demonstrate how launching a few years earlier is a much smarter strategy.
However, this bold approach is also not without its fair share of risks. These are the most common ones:
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Kozmo, an American on-demand delivery platform for products like chocolates, chips, soft drinks etc. began operations in 1998, long before such services became widespread globally.
At that time, internet usage was quite limited, resulting in tepid demand that never picked up. Unsurprisingly, they failed within a few years.
Therefore, while launching early is beneficial, history is also littered with a litany of such cautionary tales of introducing a service too ahead of its time.
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The bike-sharing interface of Pathao's app looks quite different today from the version it had launched with. This is partly because Pathao did not initially know what kind of interface would resonate best with its users. Through continuous experimentations and setbacks, it had to learn and improve the interface.
However, bike-sharing startups emerging later wouldn’t have the same problem. Since Pathao has already done the hard work, they can just copy its app interface and go to market, saving a lot of time and money.
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If you approach a restaurant today with a new food delivery service, they would immediately understand their role in the business model. That orders will arrive via an app, your rider will collect the food, you will charge a certain commission for each order.
The users are also pretty habituated in regularly using a food delivery app.
However, when Foodpanda emerged, neither users nor restaurants were sufficiently aware of how food delivery worked. The company had to invest considerable time and resources educating both the supply chain and the demand segment.
So had they not scaled in time, another food delivery startup could have just ridden on the educated market without having to make similar investments, and overtaken Foodpanda.
Thus, a founder has to be mindful of all these pitfalls when working on an innovative idea. Aside from getting the timing right, proper execution to eventually scale is also just as fundamental for success.
In the end, famed startup guru Paul Graham may offer some clues to help sum things up. In his view, the greatest products seem obvious in hindsight, but are dismissed when they initially surface. And the best way for founders to come across them is by living in the future, then building what’s missing.
So for a new founder here, the ideal approach would be to look at Bangladesh ten years in the future, see what could be ubiquitous then but are not available now, and start building with a focus on excellent execution.
And if you are ridiculed? Don’t worry. It’s probably just helping your competitors sleep while you work.