Look, we all have terrible, awful, laughable ideas for starting a new business. Every single one of us. Myself included.
In fact, I can almost guarantee that, at some point in your life, maybe recently, you yourself have been walking down the street or waiting for the bus and wham -- it hits you -- an awesome business idea that will definitely make you wildly rich. Maybe also famous. Most of us forget about that idea five minutes later, and the idea stays forgotten until someone else has massive success with a business that is remotely based on the same idea but actually very different.
Then we bring the idea back up. If only we had acted on it. That rich and famous person would be us.
After 25 years of founding, building, and selling startups, I can state without question that entrepreneurship is very much a volume game. Shooters gotta shoot. For every good business idea I've had in my lifetime, I've had to wade through thousands of terrible ideas to cherry-pick the ones that weren't going to bankrupt me or get me killed.
Wading through bad ideas costs time and money -- more time and more money the longer you deny the terribleness of the idea. I've got my scars. Believe me, I would be much more successful if I were more discerning.
But I've also learned that great entrepreneurs don't have only great business ideas. They have bad ones too. The difference is great entrepreneurs kill those bad ideas quickly.
Now, in a lot of cases, killing a bad business idea is easy. You just .
