When should you start a startup?
Not when you get an idea.
Most of us start the day the idea shows up. We buy the domain, tell two friends, and start building.
That day is the NOT YET page. You start when two other things are true: you can do something people want, and nobody else does it well.
That's chapter one of The Book of Clarity by Paras Chopra, who co-founded Wingify. The chapter is called "Capitalism rewards rare and valuable". Here's what I took from it.
Three circles. Where's the value?
He draws three circles. What you're good at. What people desire. What competitors are good at.
Tap the spot where you think the value is.
Tap anywhere inside the circles.
When I first read this, I said the value is in the middle, where all three meet. Wrong. The middle is where everyone already is, and in his drawing it gets a sad face.
The value sits where what you're good at meets what people want, and competitors are missing. He calls it the diamond.
Your mix is the rare part
He borrows a piece of career advice from Scott Adams, the Dilbert cartoonist: get good at several skills until nobody else has your exact mix.
Startups work the same way. Lots of people have one skill. Very few have your mix. That's where rare comes from.
Two mistakes we all make
We build what we want.
He writes that a common, fatal mistake is misjudging what makes something valuable. Founders scratch their own itch and assume everyone has it.
Most people are not founders like us. What they want from life is very different.
We forget people are lazy.
Why would anyone leave something that already works for something they've never heard of?
"People—you, me, everyone else—are lazy." Paras Chopra
So "a bit better" isn't enough. It has to be worth getting off the sofa for.
Is your idea rare and valuable?
Think of the idea you keep coming back to. Answer four questions honestly. Watch where the dot lands.
ValuablePeople who aren't like me want this. I heard it from them, not just my own head.
ValuableIt's clearly better than what they use now. Enough to make a lazy person switch.
RareNobody does it well today.
RareI have a mix of skills for this that few others have.
Answer the four questions.
A gut check, not a verdict. Nothing is sent anywhere.
The word we never learned
So it has to be both, rare and valuable. For that you need one word we never learned in our tier-3 colleges: insight. Our mentor taught us what it means.
The book is honest about how hard this is. Finding an idea that's both rare and valuable takes three things, he writes:
And that, he adds, is why the startups that make it are rare and valuable too.
One idea a day, on camera
I'm opening Paras's book one idea at a time, one short video each, and writing up what I learn.
I build Ayu, a health records app for Indian families. These three circles are the test I want every Ayu feature to pass.
- 8 OctWhy do most startups fail?
- 9 OctWhen should you start a startup?
- 10 OctWhy do businesses exist?
Watch it as a reel on Instagram. Follow along on Instagram, @om_cosmos
Do this today
Write your idea in one line. Under it, write who does it today, and why a lazy person would switch to you. If the second line stays blank, tear the page. It's not time yet.