In many ways, my college experience was like what you’d see on TV: filled with sex, drugs, and parties. In other ways atypical, I imagine most people haven’t fallen off roofs.
But I was very entrepreneurial in college. I was always pitching a vision for change and daring people to think beyond their day jobs. One painful lesson I learned is that doing anything new is like dragging the entire world up a hill kicking and screaming.
Most people don’t like change. Well-meaning friends and family will poke 1 million holes into an idea you’re excited about and tell you why it will never work. They will point out all of the ways you haven’t fully thought through your idea. And worse, they will have conventional wisdom on their side.
But here’s one thing they never tell you - as an entrepreneur, it is your job to question the conventional wisdom.
Before I built my startup, hello U, a mobile app that aggregated the information of local restaurants, I pitched the idea as a research assignment to my Computer Science professors. Unanimously, the app was declared stupid and too simple to be interesting. Counter-intuitively, I later learned that this is actually a sign of a very good idea. One thing most people don’t realize is that if everybody loves your idea, you are likely not doing anything new.
Any obviously good idea will only ever be a minor upgrade on the status quo. Startups favor the contrarian. Why? Because contrarians have the courage to explore what others won’t. And while it’s true that contrarians are wrong most of the time, when they’re right, they are right in a very big way.
Reddit was invented at a time parents were advising their kids not to talk to strangers on the internet. Facebook was invented when people were afraid to use their real identities online. Uber was invented when paying strangers to hitch-hike seemed ridiculous. Warby Parker sold people glasses over the internet, an idea that still sounds absurd…
It is important to listen to the critics. They serve an important role in your exploration process, but it’s equally important to trust your instincts. I didn’t have all the answers when I initially pitched hello U and I was wrong on a lot of the minor details. However, when you are directionally right about an idea, the minor details will sort themselves out and if you are waiting for all of the answers, then you will likely miss your opportunity.
Every successful business is started by someone who is a little naive. One piece of advice I can offer for businesses seeking new ideas is to think about how you can treat your next customer as if they were your very last. Most people, even the smart ones… especially the smart ones… don’t give 100% of their enthusiasm to customers. You couldn’t pay them enough money. If they do it for one customer, then they’ll have to do it for all customers, which just seems like too much hassle. As a naive fool, that’s your opportunity.
If you are an entrepreneur looking for new ideas, think about simple problems you can solve that couldn’t scale. If you can go above and beyond to amaze one person, and still have enough money to do it again, then, drip by drip, you will develop a reputation for being remarkable.
Hello U seemed like a bad idea for multiple reasons. First, the app didn’t offer any information you couldn’t already Google; my app just removed steps. Second, I initially manually entered all of the information, it wasn’t scalable. Third, I actually created comics and fictional backstories with every big app update, the update notes alone took me 1-2 days.
And yet, I think these were the reasons users loved hello U. This is why they told their friends about the app, which distinctively lacked any social features.