Phase 1: Ideation
You have an idea that seems obvious in hindsight. You imagine logos, landing pages, and customers signing up while you sleep. You talk about the product more than you work on it.
The exciting lie phase.
What I learned the hard way:
Ideas are cheap, clarity is not.
The real work in ideation isn't brainstorming features, it's answering brutal questions:
Who exactly is this for?
Be specific.
Not "entrepreneurs".
Not "anyone who needs productivity tools".
Get so narrow it scares you.
The best ideas solve problems for people you actually understand.
What (painful) problem does it solve?
The problem must be:
- Real enough that people are currently paying for workarounds
- Frequent enough that solving it saves real time/money
- Visible enough that people know they have it
Why am I the right person to build it?
This isn't about being the smartest person in the room. It's about whether you have unfair advantage through:
- Deep domain knowledge
- Access to a specific community
- Experience others don't have
- A personal obsession with this problem
The trap
Most founders fail ideation by skipping it entirely. They feel like they're "wasting time" by not coding yet. But this phase determines everything that comes after.
The worst part? You can't know if you've done it well until later. So the only thing you can do is be thorough, honest, and willing to pivot.
Until those questions are answered with clarity, nothing else matters.
What success looks like
You're done with ideation when:
- You can explain the problem in one sentence
- You know exactly who has it
- You understand why existing solutions fail them
- You're genuinely excited (not just convinced it's a good business)
The next phase will make you question all of this anyway. That's the point.