Earlier today, I was in a restaurant and I was reading an article in Business Week about the first Starbucks opening in Romania. The article was telling about the great experience that Starbucks is trying to offer to their customers. The idea behind the business is simple: selling coffee. How did people come to love so much the Starbucks coffee? What differentiates Starbucks from other coffee shops? What makes people get in line in order to get a coffee from them? What makes them so special? In the same context, what makes people choose Google for search over other services? Or what makes them choose iPods over other mp3 players, Amazon over other on-line book stores, Coca-Cola over other drinks, and so on. All of them use pretty simple business ideas: coffee, search, music, books, drinks. Though, something makes them different.

Starting a new business

When thinking about starting a new business we tend to think we need a great idea for that. We are most certain that if we have a great idea the business will succeed. And we keep searching and searching for that great idea. Sometimes we might find it, but most of the time we won’t. It took me a while to realize that waiting for that brilliant idea will not get me anywhere. Most of the successful businesses use simple ideas and focus on improving the experience of the consumers. Starbucks focuses on offering a unique experience, Google focuses on offering the best and most relevant search results, Apple focuses on design and experience with all of their products (I’m writing from my iMac so I had to say something about Apple ), and so on. They’ve all started from simple ideas and focused on creating a unique environment around their products. It took a while for these companies to influence our lives and experiences, but they did it eventually.

On the other hand, there are also companies which started their businesses from brilliant ideas: Microsoft (operating system), IBM (personal computers), and so on. And they are successful businesses. What these companies have in common is that they came up with something new, with something a lot different that what was available at the time. They offered a different and better experience in personal computing, OSes and they had a lot of impact on how people work right from the beginning.

So there are two roads you can take for your startup: great ideas or great experiences.

If you have a brilliant idea, you can start develop your business around that idea. You’ll know if your idea is brilliant or not by the reaction of the ones around you. If you tell them your idea and they love it, there’s a good chance that the idea has a lot of potential.

If you don’t have that brilliant idea but you still want your startup, you can start from a simple idea and then focus on offering a great and unique experience to your customers. And always do something that you’d use. If you don’t like the services you offer, you customers will also dislike your services.

What should I choose for my startup?

I don’t think one choice is better than the other. I’d rather say they are both good. It’s just that one is more accessible than the other. It’s easier to start from a simple idea and make the best of it, than waiting for a brilliant idea. And it’s always better starting your business and developing it than not doing anything.