Here is the bias that frequently occurs in the ideation process. early-stage startups...

One of the very complicated stages that I have dealt with in startups is the Ideation process, and from my experience, it is one of the most critical stages because it is the foundation of what comes next.

Since 2021, I have dedicated a part of my time to working with different startups. 90% of the startups that I have worked with since then are early-stage startups. If you have been reading my recent articles about competition, discovery, market and so many others, they include the lessons that I have learned in the past 2 years working with startups but also with other tech companies that I have worked for the past 6 years. 

In those early-stage startups that I have had the privilege to work with, we started with the idea that made them build that startup. In that case, we are not talking about the vision or their mission. The question was, what value are you bringing to the market? I first had to understand. is there a problem they are trying to solve? Is there any opportunity that they are helping people to seize? In any case, when someone decides to build a startup, there is something that she sees as a “need” that needs to be fulfilled.

After answering those questions, which is not easy as some people who didn’t do this exercise might think, my next question is to describe the people who they think have that specific problem they are solving or who have that “need” that they are trying to fulfill. I am trying to take you through the process that I use when I am ideating with early-stage startups.

The questions that I have mentioned above, are not answered technically right away, it takes a huge process of ideation and discovery to answer them. We have discussed discovery in my past articles, which is the main part of the ideation process. Today I wanted to discuss a huge challenge that I have faced together with the startups that I have worked with and the possibilities to address it.

The challenge that I want to discuss is actually one which is the bias between the need and the market.

The Bias between the need and the market

I called this a bias because sometimes it confuses people. But this entirely depends on different things. First of all, what is the bias that I am talking about? 

The bias that I am talking about is the confusion of knowing what to start with between the need and the market. Let me ask you a question to make this clear, between a problem to solve and a market, what do you choose first? Do you find a problem and look for a market where you can solve it, or do you find a market and look for a problem that you can solve in that particular market?

There is no wrong and right answer here, because people do it both ways, it just depends on their goals and their vision. This is even why it confuses people, especially early-stage startup founders.

Early stage startups

 From my experience, early-stage startups don’t have enough knowledge about the market. Their vision is also not solid at the beginning, which made the bias real and complicated because, for bigger companies, their vision makes decision-making and prioritization easy.

When we start the discovery process with the new startups, we start by validating if the need that they are trying to fulfill is relevant or if it’s even worth addressing. One of the awkward situations that I have been in, is finding together with the team that the “need” is not there or that the target customers don’t care. At that moment people ask themselves what’s next. Are we closing the doors or are we going to pivot?

The idea of closing is hard to digest, but at least before we close the doors (because it’s possible and it even happens to the big companies too) we try to pivot. Now the idea of pivoting also comes with some hard questions.

Market pivoting

It is possible that the problem you are trying to solve which is not relevant to your initial target customers can be relevant to another market. When I say a market I mean your target people or even a totally new market. which means, here we pivot the market, we change the people we were targeting but keep the mission of solving the problem.

Business pivoting

it is possible that through your research, you have discovered the real need for your target market that needs to be addressed, and you change the problem you are solving but keep the market. When you change the problem that you were solving, it means the business also changes.

Among the 2 possibilities, which do you think is easy to go with?

I have approached the bias with both market and business pivoting in the past, I make choices according to the team and the idea, some of the teams are really attached to the problem they try to solve, they are not attached too much to the market, which means they are flexible to change the people they were targeting if it’s not something that is going to cost them a lot of money. Others are attached to the markets because maybe they are more profitable than other markets to the point they are willing to change what they are doing and do anything that will work for that particular market. 

For this article, the goal was to highlight the bias that early-stage startups face when they are in the ideation process, especially in the problem space, and the possibilities that are frequently explored before people consider closing doors. I would like to hear from you if you have been in this situation, how have you dealt with it? In my next article, I will share things to consider choosing Pivoting.