A leading company focused on virtual transformation.
Finding a cutting-edge business concept can be quite complicated, and finding one with a billion-dollar perspective is even more complicated.
If you ask Charlie Songhurst, an angel investor and former Microsoft chief of strategy, you’ll highlight a series of critical questions that start-up groups ask themselves when they’re building a business.
In an interview with Patrick O’Shaughnessy on the Investor’s Field Guide podcast, Songhurst said winning corporations have two key traits: they solve someone’s upheavals and undeniable or obviously exciting ideas.
The central question that every founder will have to ask himself is whether he is solving a real challenge for an organization of people.
“It’s very difficult to extract financial gains to get a source of income without solving someone’s problem,” Songhurst said. “Do you make other people happier? How happy are dates? And what percentage of that can you extract as an economic surplus and what percentage happens to them?”
In other words, your concept raises a genuine price to a person’s life, and you’ll have to raise a price enough so that you can claim part of that price as a benefit to your business.
Successful founders have very positive answers to this question, but that allows them to be part of the path to sustainability.
While there is no shortage of disorders to be resolved, some naturally attract more attention than others.
This, Songhurst says, leads to an “inefficient entrepreneurs” in the most attractive projects.
“This is the challenge of domain generation as an innovation domain,” he said. “Every user interested in the domain is a brilliant genius who is passionate about and loves his paintings.”
It’s hard to compete.
In contrast, one of Songhurst’s business types is new accounting software companies and business generation corporations such as Salesforce, Workday, and Tableau.
“No one to brag about doing it at a dinner party, ” he said, however, they create abundant value.
Of his 483 angel investments, Songhurst said the average guest at a dinner party would probably think 350 are boring, “obviously they’re not boring for the founder and never bother me.”
In other words, focusing concepts that you find attractive can generate greater gains, as you’ll be one step ahead of everyone else.