Daily Magazine

Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening....

The Internet is the most powerful mechanism we can imagine to match perfectly individuals that need something, and people with something to offer. The moment started slowly by reducing complexity and removing the middle layer in the late 1990s. From insurance to early PC makers like Dell to travel agents, this time seemed to be an age where “direct” became a desirable moniker. This time seemed to favor scale and efficiency over service or brand, for commodities like insurance cover or processing power, the overheads of sales, marketing and retail footprint were stripped away.

By 2015 things changed. The balance of power between the different service layers is a jostle for control. Price-comparison sites first seemed to provide welcome traffic to airlines before airlines tried and failed to starve them of their business and promoted their own apps and websites as the preferred route. But it was too late. Services like Ocado once offered a symbiotic relationship with supermarkets, yet now supermarkets fear the power that such companies get when they get closer to the customer. In this age, the customer interface is everything. There are two approaches.

Big ideas for successful businesses don't come often, but when they do, you always know it and never expect it.

If you really want to beat the odds and become a successful entrepreneur, the last thing you want to do is sit at your computer and try to come up with a startup or small business idea out of the blue. That’s just not the way it works.

So what’s wrong with that picture? You’re asking the wrong question of the wrong person in the wrong situation.

Ask the right question.

The right question to ask is what problem or need do you feel so passionately about that you’re willing to take on great risk and make a long-term commitment to solve it?

Look, it’s fine to have personal motives or self-centered reasons for starting a business. Maybe you want to be your own boss and rule your own destiny. Perhaps you’re fed up with the corporate world and the corporate world is fed up with you. Or maybe it’s just that time.

But if you want your business to be successful, you’ve also got to come up with a product or service that solves a big customer problem way better than anything else out there. And if you don’t feel strongly about meeting that particular need, you won’t have what it takes to stick with it over the long haul.

The truth is, building a successful business from the ground up takes great personal sacrifice to work long hours for months or years on end to see it through. Not only that, but there inevitably will be all sorts of hurdles that threaten to derail the venture. If you’re not deeply and emotionally committed, you won’t make it. Read more, click on image or title.

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