Sitemaps
Let's Get Back to Our Why
Does Startup Success Validate Us Personally?
How We Secretly Lose Control of Our Startups
Should Kids Follow in Our Founder Footsteps?
The Evolution of Entry Level Workers
Assume Everyone Will Leave in Year One
Stop Listening to Investors
Was Mortgaging My Life Worth it?
What's My Startup Worth in an Acquisition?
When Our Ambition is Our Enemy
Are Startups in a "Silent Recession"?
The 5 Types of Startup Funding
What Is Startup Funding?
Do Founders Deserve Their Profit?
Michelle Glauser on Diversity and Inclusion
The Utter STUPIDITY of "Risking it All"
Committees Are Where Progress Goes to Die
More Money (Really Means) More Problems
Why Most Founders Don't Get Rich
Investors will be Obsolete
Why is a Founder so Hard to Replace?
We Can't Grow by Saying "No"
Do People Really Want Me to Succeed?
Is the Problem the Player or the Coach?
Will Investors Bail Me Out?
The Value of Actually Getting Paid
Why do Founders Suck at Asking for Help?
Wait a Minute before Giving Away Equity
You Only Think You Work Hard
SMALL is the New Big — Embracing Efficiency in the Age of AI
The 9 Best Growth Agencies for Startups
This is BOOTSTRAPPED — 3 Strategies to Build Your Startup Without Funding
Never Share Your Net Worth
A Steady Hand in the Middle of the Storm
Risk it All vs Steady Paycheck
How About a Startup that Just Makes Money?
How to Recruit a Rockstar Advisor
Why Having Zero Experience is a Huge Asset
My Competitor Got Funded — Am I Screwed?
The Hidden Treasure of Failed Startups
If It Makes Money, It Makes Sense
Why do VCs Keep Giving Failed Founders Money?
$10K Per Month isn't Just Revenue — It's Life Support
The Ridiculous Spectrum of Investor Feedback
Startup CEOs Aren't Really CEOs
Series A, B, C, D, and E Funding: How It Works
Best Pitch Decks Ever: The Most Successful Fundraising Pitches You Need to Know
When to Raise Funds
Why Aren't Investors Responding to Me?
Should I Regret Not Raising Capital?
Unemployment Cases — Why I LOOOOOVE To Win Them So Much.
How Much to Pay Yourself
Heat-Seeking Missile: WePay’s Journey to Product-Market Fit — Interview with Rich Aberman, Co-Founder of Wepay
The R&D technique for startups: Rip off & Duplicate
Why Some Startups Win.
Chapter #1: First Steps To Validate Your Business Idea
Product Users, Not Ideas, Will Determine Your Startup’s Fate
Drop Your Free Tier
Your Advisors Are Probably Wrong
Growth Isn't Always Good
How to Shut Down Gracefully
How Does My Startup Get Acquired?
Can Entrepreneurship Be Taught?
How to Pick the Wrong Co-Founder
Staying Small While Going Big
Investors are NOT on Our Side of the Table
Who am I Really Competing Against?
Why Can't Founders Replace Themselves?
Actually, We Have Plenty of Time
Quitting vs Letting Go
How Startups Actually Get Bought
What if I'm Building the Wrong Product?
Are Founders Driven by Fear or Greed?
Why I'm Either Working or Feeling Guilty
Startup Financial Assumptions
Why Every Kid Should be a Startup Founder
We Only Have to be Right Once
If a Startup Sinks, Founders Go Down With it
Founder Success: We Need a Strict Definition of Personal Success
Is Quiet Quitting a Problem at Startup Companies?
Founder Exits are Hard Work and Good Fortune, Not "Good Luck"
Finalizing Startup Projections
All Founders are Beloved In Good Times
Our Startup Culture of Entitlement
The Bullshit Case for Raising Capital
How do We Manage Our Founder Flaws?
What If my plan for retirement is "never retire"?
Startup Failure is just One Chapter in Founder Life
6 Similarities between Startup Founders and Pro Athletes
All Founders Make Bad Decisions — and That's OK
Startup Board Negotiations: How do I tell the board I need a new deal?
Founder Sacrifice — At What Point Have I Gone Too Far?
Youth Entrepreneurship: Can Middle Schoolers be Founders?
Living the Founder Legend Isn't so Fun
Why Do VC Funded Startups Love "Fake Growth?"
How Should I Share My Wealth with Family?
How Many Deaths Can a Startup Survive?
This is Probably Your Last Success
Why Do We Still Have Full-Time Employees?
The Case Against Full Transparency

Great Ideas All Start As Dumb Ideas

Wil Schroter

Great Ideas All Start As Dumb Ideas

Great companies are born from dumb ideas.

That's now how we think about them, though. We all have this fantasy that great companies start with a clear, genius vision for the world, and the rest of our time is spent just realizing that vision. That sounds awesome, but that's not at all the way ideas work, and that fundamental misunderstanding by Founders prevents a lot of great companies from ever forming.

No Shame in Dumb Ideas

The reason as Founders we prevent ourselves from finding great ideas is that we're ashamed of pursuing dumb ideas. Facebook was a dumb yearbook app long before it became the most powerful social media tool in history. In fact, before I go listing a ton of examples of every major company you've heard of that was a dumb idea let me just stop there — they are almost all dumb ideas. Pick one, find the origin story, and guess what — it was probably a dumb idea!

That's because ideas are a process, not an endpoint. That process starts with this amorphous, typically dumb idea, and gets shaped over time through lots and lots of iterations until it finds its footing as a good idea.

Of course, sometimes dumb ideas go through a really intense process to just become more complex dumb ideas. It happens. Not every caterpillar turns into a butterfly. But unless we commit to starting with an idea, which is typically dumb and that's OK, we never get to where we ultimately want to go.

The Process is far from Linear

If we've never pursued a startup idea before, we also don't have a great understanding of how the discovery process unfolds. We often assume it's linear — that the initial idea was close, and we just refine it until it's a great, market-making idea. That's not exactly how it works.

What's more likely is that we start with our dumb idea, and as we test it, pitch it, and refine it, we have a bunch of totally unexpected "A-ha!" moments that we couldn't have possibly predicted. For example, we launched Startups.com under the Fundable.com brand to help people raise money. But after talking to enough Founders we realized that raising money wasn't really the core problem — it was the fact that people didn't know how to become Founders, to begin with. We took a hard right turn and became the company we are today. We could have never predicted any of that.

What ends up happening is every experiment we do, every customer we talk to opens up another door. Sometimes those doors are a small step from where we are today, but other times those doors lead to an entirely different galaxy altogether. When we're just starting off, we simply don't know the difference. We've got to just start walking through doors!

Dumb Ideas are a Brilliant Catalyst

The great thing about starting with a dumb idea is that we're not married to it. We're perfectly willing to reshape it as needed because we know it's just the catalyst to getting us started. When we try to start off with the "perfect idea" we do the opposite — we keep trying to make every experiment fit back into our original thesis which prevents us from having that critical discovery.

Dumb ideas also give us the latitude we need to experiment more. From the very onset, we're trying to run from the original concept because we already think it's a dumb idea! That propels us to undertake even bolder experiments or listen more closely to harsh feedback because we expect it. Dumb ideas condition us to be better Founders by positioning us to listen more closely.

As Founders, we don't need grand visions — we need a path that eventually leads to grand visions. The only way to build that path is to get out of our own heads and just take a step in that direction. The right path will reveal itself over time, but unless we're actively trying to construct it, we'll never get there.

In Case You Missed It

Focus On What You Don’t Want To Do. What happens when instead of worrying about the things we want to do, we focus on the things we never, ever want to do again? How can that start to take huge steps in reducing our overall stress?

Build Your Startup Around Your Passion. Not every passion pays well. However, instead of starting with, "what will make the most money?" and hoping we like it, let’s start with what we’re most passionate about and figure out how to do that profitably.

Is Doing Non-Startup Stuff Good For My Startup? (podcast). What if we knew that time away from our startup was the key to actually making it grow faster?

Find this article helpful?

This is just a small sample! Register to unlock our in-depth courses, hundreds of video courses, and a library of playbooks and articles to grow your startup fast. Let us Let us show you!

Submission confirms agreement to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Already a member? Login

No comments yet.

Start a Membership to join the discussion.

Already a member? Login

Create Free Account