You want to launch a startup? Society is contantly changing which provides you with ever new chances to use as a launchpad for your company. Christian Rebernik, Cofounder & CEO of Tomorrow Education shows you how to spot such chances and develop an idea accordingly, based on his own experience of building a company in education.
Everything Starts With Careful Observation
As an entrepreneur, observation is an important foundation for finding the right business idea. Maybe you know a situation like this: You want to do something and you quickly notice that it doesn’t work very well which annoys you to no end. Then you start thinking: What isn’t there a better solution to this? And that’s the moment where the best kind of inspiration is born. You have recognized a problem and you know to solve it.
Christian himself had such a moment when his son was sitting at his desk at home, in a virtual classroom, listening to his teacher giving a long-winded lesson. He saw that his son was getting more and more tired until the boy finally fell asleep. In that moment, Christian thought: “For God’s sake, is that how classroom education works nowadays?”. That moment gave him the impetus to want to change something and create a way to make learning enjoyable.
What this ancedote means for you: Everything starts with observation which will help you to finda problem that needs solving.
Define What Is Important To You
Naturally, there are many problems out there but not every problem must be solved by you. That is important to know. The problem you are passionate about and that you want build a startup on must be something that is important to you, that you really care about. Launching a startup is a rollercoaster ride. There are many ups and downs and it gets intense. You need stamina for that, and the will to keep going.
So, you need to find out:
Which topics are close to your heart?
What do you really want to change?
Christian’s response to these questions is that he wants to create a sustainable society. That is the goal of his company Tomorrows Education. For him, that also means that education is the fulcrum of his goals. This insight was the starting shot for him and his team.
Develop a Business Idea
Validate Your Business Idea
The next step is validating your ideas. Which idea do you want to pursue? That’s a big big step. Christian has observed many startups in their development phase. Only few were successful with the very first idea they had. You must be open to finding the right solution.
The next step is formulating a hypothesis, going out there to expose it to feedback, and try to validate that idea. There different approaches to do that, like Design Thinking where you first create a prototype which you then present to customers. You gather feedback and subsequently adjust the prototype or the idea. To conduct such a feedback loop with customers is extremely important to find out which solution actually works on the market.
That means for you, personally: It’s important to approach your idea with an open mind, formulate hypotheses, validate, gather feedback, adjust and adapt, and decide which idea works best for you.
Christians Tomorrows Education is a good example for this process because it shows how many other startups have actually started out.
Using this method will prepare you for making your business idea into reality.
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