This is not intended to be snide. It is a genuine question:
How do you know your idea is valid if you have no skills with which to evaluate it?
There’s a maxim in the startup community that ideas are worthless. Tons of people have ideas. The value is in executing them. As a former entrepreneur I talked to a dozen people with a plan like “I have this amazing idea! You do it, then give me half the money!!” Uh, no. I’d rather work on my own plans, thanks.
When I was writing, I stopped telling people about it because of this very thing. “You are the vessel that will birth my amazing book idea upon the world.” Like, naw, mate. You have fun writing that thing. I’ll write mine.
Never thought writers would have to deal with that too, but i guess everyone thinks they should write a book now. Software engineers experience the same shit. “It’s Facebook, but inconsequential feature that no one will use”. I’ve started quoting people twice my hourly rate from my full time job and it’s gotten it to largely stop.
You don’t. Don’t take this to be discouraging, you can easily learn the skills, but you can’t have no skills, money, or plan, and just send your ideas out into the universe to succeed. It takes time to learn how to do business in whatever field you’re planning to enter with your idea. You may get lucky or utilize connections or charisma to get where you want to be, but literally nothing but an idea? Prove your idea and sell it. Otherwise it’s just not that great of an idea after all.
- Make a business plan.
- Take the business plan to people who DO have the money and get them to buy in.
Caveat: depending on if you are getting a loan from a financial institution or taking private investment, they will either want collateral (if the business fails, we will sell your house to cover the debt) or will want a pretty big chunk of the equity (we’ll take the risk that the business fails as we loose all our money, but in return we want to own 50+% of the business, have the final say on decisions, and take a good chunk of the profit if you are successful)
If you don’t have money to protect the idea legally speaking, you’d just be giving your idea away to a richer person by doing this.
Realistically, it’s pretty unlikely. The costs to start a business are rarely zero. There might be cases where the business is a service and you start by doing it without a business license or anything until you have the money to do it officially, but it’s rare to have a service business with no skills.
I know a few people who make a pretty good living who started off with next to nothing and grew.
One of my friends has a business that for like $500 he goes to a house and spends the whole day just cleaning the out side of the house, front and back. He started with a second hand ladder, marketplace pressure washer and his Toyota Corolla. These days he works 6 days a week and is turning down work regularly.
It absolutely can be done, but the hustle is real.
