From a young age, the no idea is a bad idea concept has been drilled into my head.
Even though you know the concept, it still sucks hearing no. Nobody wants to hear no to something the know is good, or that they poured their heart and soul into.
But according to the Masters of Scale podcast the Beauty of a Bad Idea, bad ideas mean you’re on the way to a good one.
The craziest of ideas tend to be the best ones. Think of how weird twitter used to be. Just 20 employees and 500 monthly users. It was a place to tell people where you were going that day.
Or Facebook, which was essentially Hot or Not back in the day. Who knew that it would turn into the media-god of sorts that it is today?
But according to Masters of Scale, you can tell when a startup is going to takeoff, you just have to look for the right signs.
A big one being an objective of tackling the small, inconvenient, everyday problems- not the huge worldly ones.
Focusing on small, overlooked demographics, or small household inconveniences are actually going to get you farther than trying to solve something big like world hunger.
I think that this is super interesting. As soon as it was said, it all clicked.
Yeah, people care about big world problems. Everyone wants to solve hunger and save the planet. But, as bad as it sounds, people care more about themselves.
Sure, people will buy a bracelet to save the turtles; but people need a Swiffer in their household. People need necessities.
I think this is what I was missing out on when I first thought of start-ups. I thought it was people trying to make the world perfect as quick as possible. In reality, its people solving small issues that will lead to the solving of bigger ones.
Spartans Innovate 
I always thought that inventions/startups were made to interest people but through this class and the material we’ve read, I’ve learned that they’re actually meant to solve problems. And, like you said, those problems are smaller problems that people have rather than huge problems.
It was interesting to think about bad ideas and how they can actually lead to good ones! There’s always room for improvements and some ideas might seem crazy now, but in the future there might be a place for them (like with social media.)
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I think that’s what I was missing when I was thinking of my startup idea as well. We don’t have to solve all the world’s problems in one sitting. Having those bad ideas is good and helpful, it pushes us to keep thinking and keep searching. Really great article!
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