STARTUP LESSONS : Assessment of the Idea

Identifying the problem or the pain point you are trying to solve is the first critical step in validating your idea. You want to be able to clearly articulate a problem that you or others are experiencing regularly. You ought to be able to write down the problem that you are solving in a simple statement.

The next step is to determine whether this problem is a major one for your potential customers or not. If you build a startup that solves a “nice-to-be-fixed” problem, people might use your product, but never pay for it.
Let us understand how you should go about assessing your idea:

Identifying the problem or the pain point you are trying to solve is the first critical step in validating your idea. You want to be able to clearly articulate a problem that you or others are experiencing regularly. You ought to be able to write down the problem that you are solving in a simple statement.

The next step is to determine whether this problem is a major one for your potential customers or not. If you build a startup that solves a “nice-to-be-fixed” problem, people might use your product, but never pay for it.
Let us understand how you should go about assessing your idea:


So, to summarize, you should try and answer the following questions when you are assessing your idea:

• What pain point are you trying to solve?
• Who are you solving it for?
• How are you trying to solve it?
• Is anyone else doing it?
• Can you do it differently from them?
• Can you charge your customer? How much?

You also learned the factors you should look at while assessing your idea with the example of UrbanClap.
We want you to understand the importance of interacting with stakeholders involved in your business idea (For example in the case of Ola cabs, stakeholders involved are people using cabs, cab drivers, cab operators etc.). So now you should start interacting with stakeholders in your business, try and understand their perspective related to the problem you are solving. This will also serve as a good initial point of getting some clarity on the assumptions you are making about the business. It's quite possible that you may come to know some other major problems while interacting with these people.

It is highly recommended to do this activity as it will help you get more clarity on subsequent topics & assessment during the flow of this course and your startup journey. So get out of the building and break the ice.