How to think of 'Ideas' beyond Mental Masturbation

If Ideas were even worth a dime, I'd have made more money in my dreams than Bill Gates will in his whole life

IDEAS ARE SHIT! The moment you realize that entrepreneurship is 99% about Execution and 1% about Ideas, you are on the right path for chasing your dreams. Until then, you can keep enjoying your mental orgasms.

Today, I am an Entrepreneur who sleeps peacefully at night and works with people who inspire me to keep getting better each day. 3 years back this time, we were college students who were plotting each day to take over the world like ‘Pinky’. 

Why should you read this?

We had closed our first round of funding close to a million dollars before we even graduated and we went on to build a good company, doing lots of mistakes, but we always had people who believed in us and our vision: ZO Rooms: CrunchBase There’s a method to this madness and I am here sharing the secrets to thinking of ideas that are executable.

Which Idea is best depends on who you are, what you can do, with who you can do and how much time you have to do it? For example I'll talk about students.

The limitations of students are pretty high as compared to others.

1. Geographic constrains
2. Time commitments to studies
3. Inexperience on various fronts

So we’ve to fight these and then see how best we can equip ourselves to not just put in a good fight but also win the war.

Before playing any Hand, one must realise the cards that he has been dealt. 

There are 4 key parameters that one must first evaluate before even Thinking of an Idea.

1. Time, the Dinosaur
2. Skills, the Ninja
3. Money, the Donkey
4. Network, the Hot Girl

The only Idea that ever changed the world is Religion; everything else needs execution to see the light at the end of the tunnel. To be honest even religion needed shit loads of execution.

Being a student is the best time one can Start-up. In the course of this post, I’ll answer why.

[This is you being bound by Time, Money, Skills, Network. But always look up, cause there are solutions once you know the problem]

Corners of Entrepreneurship

Time

Even the mighty earth needs a year to just take a circle around the Sun.

• You should be able to clearly quantify how much time you have in hand for your project or  start-up.
• As a student, you might have to spend considerable time with your assignments.
• As a working professional, you will need to spend time fulfilling your job obligations.
• A Lover will need to spend time with a psychiatrist.
• A married guy doesn’t really know what time is.

In all, when you ask yourself how much time you have to change the game?

You should be able to answer with 

• 100 Hours per week or
• 10 hours per week:

In the latter case you should resort to watching Stranger Things, True Detective, Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Foreign language movies, Naruto, Liverpool football matches

This is not a joke actually, there’s much to learn from art. You cannot simply think of creating an impact by giving anything less than 100 hours/week

Short Story: Once upon a time there was a ‘Z-Rex’; he was T-Rex, but with a Zing. He lived happily with his friends and family. Like all other dinosaurs, he was also a cold blooded reptile. When the temperatures started to drop, they needed to migrate to warmer lands to keep their body temperature in check and survive as they had always done.

That’s when Z-Rex came up with an idea to dig deeper to find heat. Everyone laughed at him and they planned to move East in search of warm lands the very next day. I still remember that was a long and painful night for our hero. He had to make a choice - either let go of his idea or his love. Eventually 3 of them stayed back, unfortunately She did not. They decided to dig deep; each hour they would work as a team in alternate shifts and work 48 hours each day! 16 hours each of them. As they continued to dig deeper they faced several problems 

1. Water started filling in: They had to go deeper to survive and that’s when they learnt to swim.
2. Sunlight became rare: That’s when they learnt to work in dark and enhance their other senses.
3. Food was clever: They learnt the art of camouflage and sudden sharp attacks to hunt fishes and keep themselves alive

In less than 100 days. They had found a cave warm enough for them to live. 

What happened next was unimaginable! 

Soon, the whole planet was covered with ice and there was no place left to migrate for other dinosaurs. With different surroundings and a will to fight, Z-Rex evolved and so did his succeeding generations. 

Dinosaurs were now something else - they could swim, they could go on land at times, they could crawl and as land became warm later, they could even fly! Z-Rex was the father of all modern reptiles, unfortunately we have all forgotten this story. 99% of your DNA is common to both you and him; just that he wanted to try his idea and he gave it all the time he ever had.

Key learning:

• Digging is a skill in which team multiplies, walking is not!
• They worked harder and learnt from the problems that came and became better reptiles.
• If you believe in something, you've to go all-in; there’s no such thing as Plan B!
• She wanted the safer route, he did not, so they had different paths.

Skills

If you can do everything, it probably means you are not very good at anything. 

You might have a lot of passion and you might even be a rockstar, but if you cannot quantify your skills you will need to be comfortable working in ambiguous environments.

What are skills?

1. Research & More Research
2. Technology: Web and app development
3. Design: Branding
4. Creativity: Content/Strategy
5. Social Media
6. Sales, Sales!
7. Getting Shit done
8. Motivating
9. Managing Resources
10. Others

You need to know what you can do, but more importantly you need to know what you can’t do! This will help you putting together a team which can supplement you and help you limit the ideas which you can execute for real.

Being an entrepreneur is the fastest way to learn a lot of skills that you don’t even know exist. But even before you start, you should be able to lay down your plans and allocate job responsibilities. To maximize returns from this, it’s very essential to realize who’s specializing in what, and what (s)he loves to do.

Ideas need to know what your skills are and what you cannot do; also ninjas are excellent story tellers if you can get them to speak.

The Storyteller’s story

“What do you want to do?” – She asked him.

“I want to be the strongest man on this planet.” - He replied.

"That’s some ambition, but what are you good at?” – She asked.

“I am a great story teller and I also have a great smile!” – He exclaimed.

She laughed, “I doubt that’s going to be enough.”

But, with just a wonderfully knit story, he knew what they wanted to hear. He knew when to speak, what to speak and how to touch the cords of their hearts. Yes, He Could!

Oh man! And was she wrong. Soon America had the 1st black president - the story teller who made everyone dream charmed his way to become the strongest man on living planet and even one of the most loved ones at that, considering the options that are to follow him. 

Any resemblance to any person dead or alive is purely coincidental.

Key Learning

• Knowing what you can do and what you can’t is half the battle prepared.
• Not knowing is full battle lost!
• Technical skills are very critical in today’s world. If a single skill which can make you motherfucking rich, it has to be this. With a great team, you can do wonders!
• Designing skills are highly underrated, if you are a good designer, remember you can win the world - Be Creative.

Money

Friends, All your base money are belong to us 

As an entrepreneur or a small independent project, you will have to learn to work with minimum resources, but there are some things that’ll need money at the end of the day. So, fundraising for bootstrapping is also an important skill. At Zostel, we bootstrapped around $40,000. We did everything from borrowing from friends, stealing from them, taking multiple student loans and in all ranges from $10 to $2,000

No money is small enough to say no, ever. Steemit can be a great platform as well to raise money for your projects! 

It is extremely important to know how much money you can raise because it’s not something you can google. It will decide what ideas are worth refining and what are worth zilch right now.

1. If you wish to be present on Mars, that’s most probably going to be your second project, or even third!
2. If you wish to produce breakthrough tablets, you are going to need a lot of research and shit loads of money. Not your first start-up!
3. If you wish to bring breakfast culture and sell breakfasts every morning - that is something that can be your first start up.
4. If you wish to design and sell posters online - now that's something that you can think of doing right now.

Ideas need to know how much money is possible before being born.

It’s said that one must know the length of the blanket he owns. As an entrepreneur you must know the length of the blanket that can be sewed from all that you have around, anything less would leave you cold feet and increase your vulnerability.

Short Story

Sam always wanted to make a movie. He would go to people and tell them his wonderful story. But, everyone was busy with 'Tom Movies'. Tom’s movies made shit loads of money and so no one wanted to invest in Sam’s movie. After years of struggle Sam died and there was no movie. 

Key Learning: There’s an inverse proportionality between Ideas that can be executed and Money required for them. Limit your ideas, challenge yourself to innovate or think radically to get better results with even bare minimum requirements.

Moral of the Story: Don’t struggle for that one dream. Reduce your risk and try something that works before going for the big hunt. 

Network

If you know the right people, you’ll be on the right path. 

You might hate it, but if you are the son of the leading politician in India, chances are your start-up is going to beat the shit out of anything that ever existed without any expertise whatsoever. You’ll be making more money each second that any sane human can spend in a year. That’s the ground reality, and such networks are prevalent across geographies

Be Shameless. If you know someone, go out and ask for help. Call your alma mater and discuss your idea. Call your childhood friend who now works at Facebook and ask for $2,000 loan. Tell your parents to help you guarantee an application. 

Here’s where being at Y Combinator would really help you crack a lot of networks with much less resistance. The same might be true for different universities in the west for reaching out to alumni networks.

Alma mater helps in connecting people - nobody says no to an open honest heart, at least not when you are asking for help. So once again, it’s time to be shameless and exploit the maximum of your alma mater.

Short Story: Once upon a time there was a good looking girl and she had an idea to sell fresh vegetables online. It was a difficult job since she did not know:

1. How to make a website
2. How to add stuff online or
3. How to deliver or setup Amazon
4. How to do anything about it.

 Three Snaps and messages later, 

• There was a guy finishing the website of OrganicFreshVeggie.com,
• Another was busy uploading high resolution pictures of all the vegetables,

• The third was dealing with farmers and delivery boys to deliver the vegetables to the desired addresses.

Later, it became a marketplace, but for vegetables. In due course, they also added fruits to their catalogue. 

Moral of the story: If you know you’re hot, forget that not. Also, the networks that you can influence can decide the factor between a success and a failure.

Team Multiplication Factor

If I work 100 hours a week and my competitor works 40 hours a week, my growth will be 2.5 times his.

Elon Musk famously said this. Just imagine if you are 4 individuals each working 100 hours a week. Your growth will be 10 times the competition!

Time, Skills, Money, Network: All of these get benefits from having a passionate team which is ready to go all-in.

1. You’ll have more skills among yourselves.
2. You’ll be able to raise money more efficiently and can even dedicate a resource towards this exercise.
3. Your network is simply an exponential function of the team size.

Having said that, make sure to work with people who share your vision and passion. Most startups don’t fall from the pressure outside, but from the pressure that develops within. Communicate well with each other, use the technologies of Whatsapp, Skype etc. if you are geographically separated. If you want to do it, there’s nothing that can stop you from doing it.

No Job is satisfying enough except the one that you create for yourself. 

Use your time right now to free yourself. Take risks. If not you, then ask yourself who could? If you're a student who already hold a job offer, it basically means you’ve 6-8 months of uninterrupted time to experiment and innovate. Go ahead. Do it, now!

I originally wrote this as an answer on Quora, but I made small changes for current times and strongly feel Steemit is a place where it might be really helpful for several budding entrepreneurs and indepedent project creators, like What I am doing with my Sci-Fi Graphic Novel: 

Whatever examples of successes or failures you would like to discuss, or something that you tried yourself would bring a lot to the table. Please share in the comments section.

I have tried here to help students, individuals and entrepreneurs break down their ideas and make them executable, because a lot of times we are not able to see the next step and then we feel that the people who are doing it might just be a different breed altogether.

You’ve nothing to lose, you’ll either be fucking rich with money or experience. Either way, it’ll be a great addition to yourself :)