You Have a Great Idea? Here Are 6 Reality Checks.
Six reality checks for separating ideas worth pursuing from ones that only sound exciting — universality, simplicity, timelessness, and the rest.
Successful singers, designers, writers, and entrepreneurs all have unproductive days, but a few successes can make them stand out. Making a hundred mistakes in one field can teach you more than making one mistake in a hundred fields—provided you learn from them. One successful idea can change your financial life.
You can increase your chances by making more informed attempts and becoming more selective about which ideas receive your full commitment. Think of a lion waiting for its prey and concentrating its energy on the chase, while a cow spends the day grazing. Explore widely while the cost is small; concentrate your effort when you have a reason to commit.
The following six questions help you make that choice. They favour understandable, durable businesses that you can test and grow. They are filters, not requirements every successful business must meet.
1. Is It Universal?
Ask yourself if your idea is as relevant to someone in South Africa as it is to someone in North America. Businesses built around basic human needs and desires have a lasting source of demand. Think of flooring shops, furniture manufacturers, transportation companies, and home builders. These types of businesses can thrive in almost any region. Think of the appeal of a hot cup of coffee on a cold day or a cool drink on a hot day. No matter what the next big trend in AI is, we are still going to be eating ice cream, using condoms to have sex, and enjoying a morning cup of coffee.
Find a familiar need and try to serve it better using your unique experiences. A business can do this for one neighbourhood; it does not have to serve the whole world. The need tells you where to look. You still need to find customers willing to pay for your particular offer.
2. Is It Boring?
Think about things that go unnoticed. Toilet paper, for example, is one of the most important innovations we use daily, yet it's rarely acknowledged. I hardly know any kid who dreams of making toilet paper when they grow up. Meanwhile, I know many teenagers who want to be AI developers, pilots, crypto billionaires, or investment bankers. While there is nothing wrong with these professions, their attractiveness can draw attention away from less glamorous opportunities. Being boring does not make a business profitable, but it is a poor reason to overlook one. Find a boring business and take it seriously.
3. Is It Timeless?
Universality asks how widely a need is shared; timelessness asks how long it is likely to last. Technology is often overhyped, and recognising what's lasting is difficult. From tulips to the internet, history offers plenty of examples of excitement outrunning judgment. Being imaginative, people tend to overestimate the effects of a single technology. We imagine a future of flying cars and teleportation machines, and then discover that it also includes vaping teenagers and Zyn. Ask yourself whether the underlying need existed 100 years ago and whether it is likely to matter 100 years from now. The need may endure even as the way you serve it changes. We hear about a few people who win big pursuing cutting-edge ideas like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, and Jeff Bezos. However, history is written by the victors. The failures receive far less attention, making the odds of success difficult to judge from the winners alone. Look for a lasting need, while staying open to better ways of serving it.
4. Is It Simple?
Start with a clear problem, and explain your offer in one sentence that your grandmother can understand. In the modern age, we often see credibility and authenticity in complexity. If someone speaks in a language we don't understand and uses acronyms and domain-specific jargon, we assume they know what they're talking about. Expertise should help someone explain the basic idea clearly, even when the work itself is complicated. Many people can sound smart, but few are.
Clarity also helps you see what the business requires to operate. Which tasks need specialist judgment, and which can become repeatable processes? Make those processes easy to teach. That makes the business less dependent on you, even when the work itself requires expertise. Go after businesses that are simple to understand and execute.
5. Is It Testable?
How easy is it to create a prototype and test your idea? Break your idea down into testable hypotheses and try to refute them instead of proving them. Borrow the spirit of Karl Popper's Conjectures and Refutations: look for errors in an idea instead of collecting reasons to defend it. If you think starting a modular housing business is a good idea, try to prove it's not a good idea. Ask what evidence would show that customers do not want it, or that the costs do not work. If you cannot find a flaw, check whether you have designed a strong enough test.
If the first useful test requires more capital or time than you can afford, it's probably not the right idea for you at this stage. Some businesses require substantial investment before they can be tested fully. Look for the smallest experiment that answers an important question before committing more of your capital, labour, and time.
6. Is It Scalable?
For me, the goal of a business is ultimately to give you wealth. A useful way to think about wealth is the freedom to avoid being in a location you hate, at a time you don't want, doing what you don't like. Think of dentists, lawyers, personal chefs, and tailors. When these professionals work alone, their reward is closely tied to the hours worked.
A business is scalable when revenue or output can grow faster than the resources needed to deliver it. Repeatable processes, automation, and economies of scale can help. Think of McDonald's franchise model. McDonald's built a brand and has licensed its trademark thousands of times while collecting royalty cheques. Manufacturing offers another example: the cost of a car design can be spread over thousands of vehicles, though each one still requires materials, labour, and capital.
Outline the process for creating your product or service and delivering it to customers. Identify which steps can be automated, streamlined, or outsourced without sacrificing quality or making the costs unworkable. Growth can also bring more management work, so judge it against the freedom you wanted in the first place.
By applying these six reality checks—universality, simplicity, timelessness, scalability, testability, and embracing the "boring"—you can increase the quality of your decisions and focus on ideas that have true potential for long-term success. The world is full of distractions, trends, and fleeting opportunities, but building something that endures and solves real problems is a sensible place to focus your effort. Remember to think like a lion: be patient, deliberate, and focused on the right prey. It's not about chasing every opportunity—it's about catching the right one.