• Home
  • Latest
  • Fortune 500
  • Finance
  • Tech
  • Leadership
  • Lifestyle
  • Rankings
  • Multimedia

Trendingnow

1

Analysts expected oil to surge above $200 but China has quietly kept prices half of that—and can’t for much longer

2

Corporate America has been draining the world's water. Matt Damon's new campaign calls on Gap, Starbucks, and Amazon to help give it back

3

Marc Lore’s robots make 500 burrito bowls an hour. A human can make 45

1

Analysts expected oil to surge above $200 but China has quietly kept prices half of that—and can’t for much longer

2

Corporate America has been draining the world's water. Matt Damon's new campaign calls on Gap, Starbucks, and Amazon to help give it back

3

Marc Lore’s robots make 500 burrito bowls an hour. A human can make 45
CommentaryEntrepreneurs

4 Steps to Come up With a Really Good Business Idea

By
Avery Roth
Avery Roth
and
Bethany Cianciolo
Bethany Cianciolo
Down Arrow Button Icon
By
Avery Roth
Avery Roth
and
Bethany Cianciolo
Bethany Cianciolo
Down Arrow Button Icon
February 23, 2016, 12:31 PM ET
461408897
Photograph by Guido Mieth—Getty Images/Flickr RM

The Entrepreneur Insiders network is an online community where the most thoughtful and influential people in America’s startup scene contribute answers to timely questions about entrepreneurship and careers. Today’s answer to the question “How do you come up with a new startup idea?” is written by Avery Roth, founder and CEO of The Startup Consulting Group.

All entrepreneurial journeys are a complex intertwining of personal and professional life. To create a worthwhile business concept, you must figure out which opportunities make the most of three factors: your skills and values, the problems you are passionate about solving, and the profit potential. You may recognize this analysis as a version of product-market fit—a concept usually reserved for companies, but one that also works incredibly well for individuals.

Deep dive
The process begins with a deep dive into oneself. Your aim is to list your top five values, strengths, skills, and lifestyle goals. Personality tests such as Myers-Briggs and Gallup’s StrengthsFinder (including the new entrepreneurial strengths test) can be helpful in fleshing out some of this detail. You may also wish to solicit feedback from your personal and professional network. Aggregate the data, and for each of your lists, consolidate similar attributes into buckets until you have only five traits on each list. The conclusions will be crystal clear.

For example, if you conclude that you value family, that some of your best skills relate to advising other people, and that your primary lifestyle goal is to have work-life balance, you may determine that you want to build a company that will allow you sufficient time off, such as a professional services business. On the other hand, if you value status, you have fantastic computer-engineering skills, and your lifestyle goals include penthouse living, you might conclude that becoming a CTO at a tech startup is a good fit for you.

See also: Here’s Why Your Business Should Stop Trying to Be the Next Facebook

Passion topics
The next step is to assess the topical areas about which you are passionate. This exercise can incorporate subject matter you’ve studied, a domain you have mastered in previous careers, or a subject that’s been a hobby for you to date. All subjects are fair game—so long as you’re passionate about them—and they can be totally unrelated to your skills. For instance, the CTO in our example might have a passion for topics as diverse as pets, coffee, and Asia. The important thing is that you feel energized to promote and solve problems in these domains.

 

Opportunities
Think about the previous steps as feeding two circles of a Venn diagram. Your next step is to assess where those circles overlap. In other words, how can you bring your strengths and talents to topics you are passionate about? For example, our CTO might come up with ideas as diverse as building an app where pet owners can meet each other, or a community for coffee lovers. She could also build something that combines her interests, like an app where pet owners in Asia can meet for coffee. Your mission is to open your mind to as many fun, interesting, maybe even wacky ideas that instill you with excitement. In order to immerse yourself substantively in this exercise, it’s necessary to surrender your ideas of what you should do with your life, and instead embrace a childlike wonder for what you could do.

Market overlay
You now have a list of cool business concepts. Jumping into building a business at this point is exactly where many entrepreneurs go wrong. It’s a critical final step to assess whether your ideas are likely to be profitable. The key in this analysis is to understand the customers for whom you are solving a problem. Reach out to them to verify their pain points and their willingness to pay. Speak to experienced business people to test your assumptions and ask them to poke holes in your thesis. This critical thinking will likely generate new derivatives of your original idea that are much more likely to succeed. You may also become more observant of lateral business problems you encounter in your daily life, which is precisely how many brilliant startup ideas are generated. The more often you share your ideas and open them up to feedback, the stronger they will become and the more certain you will feel that you have a business idea worth building.

Avery Roth is a startup strategist and the founder and CEO of The Startup Consulting Group. She works with startup founders to achieve product-market fit, scale, and prepare for fundraising.

About the Authors
By Avery Roth
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon
By Bethany Cianciolo
See full bioRight Arrow Button Icon

Latest in Commentary

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025

Most Popular

Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Finance
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam
By Fortune Editors
October 20, 2025
Fortune Secondary Logo
Rankings
  • 100 Best Companies
  • Fortune 500
  • Global 500
  • Fortune 500 Europe
  • Most Powerful Women
  • World's Most Admired Companies
  • See All Rankings
  • Lists Calendar
Sections
  • Finance
  • Fortune Crypto
  • Features
  • Leadership
  • Health
  • Commentary
  • Success
  • Retail
  • Mpw
  • Tech
  • Lifestyle
  • CEO Initiative
  • Asia
  • Politics
  • Conferences
  • Europe
  • Newsletters
  • Personal Finance
  • Environment
  • Magazine
  • Education
Customer Support
  • Frequently Asked Questions
  • Customer Service Portal
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms Of Use
  • Single Issues For Purchase
  • International Print
Commercial Services
  • Advertising
  • Fortune Brand Studio
  • Fortune Analytics
  • Fortune Conferences
  • Business Development
  • Group Subscriptions
About Us
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • About Us
  • Press Center
  • Work At Fortune
  • Terms And Conditions
  • Site Map
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • LinkedIn icon
  • Instagram icon
  • Pinterest icon

Latest in Commentary

Three ways that Asia’s enterprises are adopting AI—and where they are falling behind
CommentaryOracle
Three ways that Asia’s enterprises are adopting AI—and where they are falling behind
By Garrett IlgJune 11, 2026
8 hours ago
gordon
CommentaryVenture Capital
Gordon Ritter: I predicted AI’s learning loop a decade ago. The doomers are still measuring the wrong thing
By Gordon RitterJune 11, 2026
17 hours ago
bessent
CommentarySocial Security
Social Security and Medicare are heading toward insolvency. Congress has 6 years to act
By Steve H. Hanke and David M. WalkerJune 11, 2026
19 hours ago
Digital sovereignty isn’t the same thing as digital isolation. Asia’s governments should be careful
Commentarydata sovereignty
Digital sovereignty isn’t the same thing as digital isolation. Asia’s governments should be careful
By Leonard LimJune 10, 2026
1 day ago
tim
CommentaryAirline industry
Merlin CTO: autonomy can rebuild the foundation of aviation — and national security
By Tim BurnsJune 9, 2026
3 days ago
dewar
CommentaryLeadership
I founded McKinsey’s CEO practice: Here’s why operational excellence is a liability right now
By Carolyn DewarJune 9, 2026
3 days ago

Most Popular

Analysts expected oil to surge above $200 but China has quietly kept prices half of that—and can’t for much longer
Energy
Analysts expected oil to surge above $200 but China has quietly kept prices half of that—and can’t for much longer
By Sasha RogelbergJune 10, 2026
1 day ago
Corporate America has been draining the world's water. Matt Damon's new campaign calls on Gap, Starbucks, and Amazon to help give it back
Environment
Corporate America has been draining the world's water. Matt Damon's new campaign calls on Gap, Starbucks, and Amazon to help give it back
By Catherina GioinoJune 9, 2026
3 days ago
Marc Lore’s robots make 500 burrito bowls an hour. A human can make 45
Innovation
Marc Lore’s robots make 500 burrito bowls an hour. A human can make 45
By Amanda GerutJune 9, 2026
2 days ago
Current price of oil as of June 11, 2026
Personal Finance
Current price of oil as of June 11, 2026
By Joseph HostetlerJune 11, 2026
16 hours ago
Pentagon accuses Alibaba, Baidu and BYD, three of China's biggest companies, of supporting the Chinese military
Asia
Pentagon accuses Alibaba, Baidu and BYD, three of China's biggest companies, of supporting the Chinese military
By Kate O'Keeffe and BloombergJune 8, 2026
3 days ago
Costco CEO Ron Vachris rose from forklift driver to the C-suite without a college degree: ‘Don’t chase a title’ is the career advice that got him there
Success
Costco CEO Ron Vachris rose from forklift driver to the C-suite without a college degree: ‘Don’t chase a title’ is the career advice that got him there
By Preston ForeJune 8, 2026
4 days ago

© 2026 Fortune Media IP Limited. All Rights Reserved. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy | CA Notice at Collection and Privacy Notice | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information
FORTUNE is a trademark of Fortune Media IP Limited, registered in the U.S. and other countries. FORTUNE may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Offers may be subject to change without notice.