- How is it that it's almost every other day
that a new unicorn seems to be minted?
Well, that's not the real question, isn't?
The real question is this, here's the big question.
How do you actually go after a billion dollar startup idea?
How do you know if you are actually in a billion
dollar startup idea right now?
In this episode, I'm gonna dig into the three principles
you absolutely need to know when vetting a startup idea
and starting to understand how to actually go
after a billion dollar idea.
Intro. (upbeat music)
What's up, everybody.
Welcome to "Unstoppable" on this channel.
I help SaaS founders like you
grow your SaaS businesses faster,
navigate the path to that next stage grow,
navigate that shawshank crawl to product market fit
with an unstoppable strategy.
So if you're new to the channel,
I drop a video like this three times a week, every week.
So be sure to hit the subscribe button and that bell icon,
that way you'll get notified every single time
I drop an episode with the TK energy.
Now, if you're already part of our community,
if you're part of my SaaS Go to Market coaching program,
welcome back.
It's so awesome to see you over here.
So here's a question.
How do you actually make sure
that you're going after a billion dollar startup idea?
Right, my last company ToutApp,
we pioneered the sales engagement space.
The sales engagement space today is expected to become
about $5.5 billion in another year or two.
It's got multiple unicorns.
It's got hundreds of companies
playing in the space right now,
but back when we started,
it was literally just me and Yesware.
So we started that category.
Then we actually sold ToutApp.
We sold ToutApp to Marketo,
Marketo was in the marketing automation category
and marketing automation is a multi-billion dollar category
as well.
We did a two-year transformation at Marketo
and we sold that to Adobe for $4.75 billion.
So having been part of multiple categories
with multiple billion dollar categories, multiple unicorns
what have I learned?
As I think about my next startup journey
as I think about coaching founders in their startup ideas,
what are the principles that I apply to figure
out if this is a billion dollar idea?
If it's an idea worth going after.
So in this episode, I'm gonna walk you
through the three principles that I think
through every single time, I try to validate an idea,
whether it's for myself or for a founder I'm coaching
and based on these three principles that I've used over
and over, my hit rate's been relatively high
in terms of understanding if there is a there there
for companies that are looking to get traction.
So if you're excited to dig in, go ahead
and smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
It really likes it when you do that.
Now let's go to principle number one.
Principle number one is the idea that
there's really nothing new under the sun.
My co-founder for my first company
Pete Curley always used to tell me this.
It's like, "Look TK, there's nothing new under the sun,"
except he knew me in college.
So I wasn't known as TK back then.
But the point is this.
If you look at some of the most innovative companies,
some of the biggest companies, some billion dollar companies
they tapped into something that wasn't really new,
what they actually did was disrupt how it was done.
Let me explain.
In the end of the day, the same human behaviors are at play.
If you think about something like Facebook,
Facebook, people love to gossip.
People like to show off their vacation pictures.
Before they used to invite you over
and make you watch it on a highlight reel.
Now they post it on Facebook.
Those same behaviors of gossiping, of actually spying
on what other people are up to,
those same human behaviors exist
except Facebook just made it way easier to do.
The second thing to think about
is the fact that the same workflows
and results are important in business.
You think about sales engagement.
You think about marketing automation.
Ultimately, both those categories are about pipeline.
They're about how do I generate enough pipeline?
How do I generate leads?
That's a workflow.
And that's a result
that every business will have a need for.
They've had a need for in the last hundreds of years
and they will have a need for in the next hundreds of years.
So what's the difference?
Well, the difference is if you're building a startup today
and you want to go after some of these billion dollar ideas
which are inherently billion dollar behaviors,
billion dollar results that companies
and people have always wanted,
and while one from here on out,
really what you need to think about
is has this always happened,
because there's nothing new under the sun.
And is there a way to get them the same result
faster, cheaper, and without a middleman.
That's my first real principle.
If you're going after an idea,
is it something that people have done forever?
And now can you, because of technology advances,
because of whatever creative way
of building a product you've found, because of that,
is there a way to actually do it faster, cheaper
and actually cutting out the middleman?
That's essentially how billion dollar companies are created.
If you look at the core pattern
on what really makes it click,
they either figured out a way to do it faster
or they figured out a way to do a cheaper
or figure out a way to cut out the middleman.
And you do all three,
you're definitely gonna be a billion dollar company.
But what's important is,
none of these companies were trying to invent something new.
Take the grand daddy of SaaS companies right now,
Salesforce,
there were not the first CRM,
but they knew that salespeople hated updating the CRM
and they needed a better way to do it.
So they actually build a faster way to do it.
It's ironic now because it's not exactly the fastest way
to do it, but believe it or not, in the early days,
Salesforce started to pitch salespeople first
then go to sales manager and said,
"Hey, here's just a better way to keep track of your deals."
And that's how they got initial attraction.
They found a way to do it faster
in the cloud without having to use any clunky software,
at least back then.
So principle number one is there's nothing new
under the sun, as Pete Curley would say.
So figure out what are the human behaviors
that will continue to exist?
What are the workflows
and results will continue to be important?
And is there a faster, cheaper
and better way to actually do this?
If you can start to do that, you're onto something already.
So that's principle number one.
Now principle number two is,
you actually have to embrace your domain knowledge.
Now you may find an incredible set of behaviors
or results or some way to disrupt something that you think,
but if you have zero domain knowledge,
you don't know literally anyone in that industry
or in that space, then chances are
that you're going to fail.
Especially in B2B SaaS, the average age of a founder
is 38 to 42 for a reason, especially in B2B SaaS.
It's because they have domain knowledge
and domain knowledge is super important.
I remember in the early days of ToutApp,
we were batch number one or two,
something like that at 500 startups.
And I met some co-founders and I was like,
"What are you guys working on?"
They were like,
"Oh, we're gonna disrupt the wedding industry."
Now these were two dudes, never married,
never been in the wedding industry.
And they wanted to disrupt the wedding.
And it's needless to say they bailed.
They went on to do better things, but they failed.
So I think this is hugely underestimated.
If you want to go after a billion dollar category,
principle number one is, there's nothing new under the sun.
Figure out how to actually disrupt an existing behavior
or workflow, but also number two,
embrace your deep domain knowledge.
You gotta have deep domain knowledge
on whatever category or problem you're going after.
If you don't, it's already hard enough.
It's just gonna be stacked more against you.
The other thing that I like to mention over here is,
as you're going through these two pieces,
there's just no way you can pivot you're way
into something you're passionate about.
And if you're not passionate about it,
if you don't deeply care about it, you won't succeed.
That point is super important.
I'm gonna explain that more in principle number three.
But before I go to principle number three,
let me just pause here for a second.
If you start to see the power
in this type of framework thinking,
on what are existing behaviors that will exist
and have always existed, how do we cut out the middleman?
How do we make it faster?
How do we make it cheaper?
And can we do all three?
And how do we actually couple that with my domain knowledge?
.This is where the powers.
If you starting to see the power of this,
can I just get a yes
in the comments below and also be sure
to smash that like button
if you haven't already.
YouTube really likes it, I love it,
my team also loves it too.
We put a lot of love into these videos.
Also, if you are building out your SaaS business,
if you wanna vet your idea,
if you are in search of an idea, then I invite you to check
out my 10-Points SaaS Business checklist.
It's completely free.
I'll tell you more about it
at the end of this video,
but let's go to principle number three first.
Principle number three is, you got to bumble around
and listen to the market and you've got to listen carefully.
Once you start to hone in on a specific behavior or an idea
or a workflow, and you're like, we can do it better.
And you're starting to actually check off like,
yep, I've got domain knowledge around this
and you're starting to talk
to all the people that you know around it,
there's this bumbling around period.
And I know bumbling around
is not a very scientifically technical word,
but that's the best word I have for it.
And I've done this for every business.
Like you just gotta kind of live in it,
bumble around in it.
You got to talk to all the people in it.
You got to hack together some solutions, see if it fits,
that's bumbling around.
But the reason it's bumbling around
is there's a lot of activity,
but while you're bumbling around,
you kind of hovering over this thing.
There's a lot of listening.
Ultimately, the market decides, the market will tell you
whether this is a thing or not.
And this is one of the biggest misconceptions.
People think that you gotta like just brute
force your way into making people believe.
That's not really true.
When you start to get closer to product market fit,
it's because you keep pivoting pivoting, pivoting,
tweaking, tweaking, tweaking
and eventually you listen to the market enough
and something clicks and then it's super easy from there.
That's what happens.
And so you got to listen carefully to the market
as you start to test out these ideas,
and I call it the bumbling around period.
And you keep going at it,
keep going, keep going, keep going.
All of a sudden that sound is gonna be slightly different
when you hit the wall.
When you kind of go keep chopping away at it.
It's gonna sound a little different,
and that's when you're like,
okay, there's something here because you kept pivoting
and now the market's telling us something,
where they're like super passionate about it.
So those are my three principles
for a billion dollar startup idea.
What you need to do, principle number one is,
there's nothing new under the sun.
So find existing behaviors, existing workflows,
existing results, that's gonna exist, has existed,
will continue to exist
and see if you can do it faster, cheaper
and cutting out the middleman.
Number two,
you need to actually embrace your deep domain knowledge.
Make sure you're still doing something
where you have domain knowledge.
And maybe you start with your domain knowledge
and then go look at existing things
or you do the other way around.
It doesn't matter, but bolts need to kind of line up.
Number three, bumble round.
Once you do that, you'll find your own path.
And this is something that's important to note.
And we've known this,
like all of us talk about this in startups,
the best, biggest, most important companies
came off looking like a toy.
And like, there wasn't a single company that ended up
becoming a billion dollar company
that was like originally on day one.
They're like, "We're gonna be a billion dollar company."
Everyone agrees.
Like it looked like a toy.
There were plenty of doubters,
but there were still a core group of people
that really believed and understood
and have that unique insight.
And that's what made it successful.
On the other hand, you have companies that from day one
they raised $50 million for a seed round and they said
they're gonna change the world
and they end up fizzling out.
So don't be discouraged.
You need to make sure that you're bumbling around.
You need to make sure you're in it for the long haul.
You need to have some fun with it.
You need to explore, keep an open mind.
I need you to follow these principles.
They'll help you actually kind of navigate this path.
If you want to dig more into this
in terms of vetting out the idea, I invite you to check
out my 10-Point SaaS Business checklist.
In it, I include these three principles
and also include some additional questions
that you should think through
to actually validate your idea,
vetted out and actually go through the right process
to make sure that you're going after a substantial idea,
perhaps a billion dollar idea.
So to check that out,
just go to TKKADER.COM/SAAS-CHECKLIST,
TKKADER.COM/SAAS-CHECKLIST.
I'll also link to it below so you can just click on it.
It's completely free.
And in it, you'll get my 10-Point checklist
on how to actually validate your startup idea,
your SaaS idea and actually how to start building it.
Inside of it, I also have a free training
that you can sign up for after you get the checklist
where I actually walk you
through those key questions as well.
So you're welcome to check that out.
If you got value from this video,
be sure to smash up like button,
the YouTube algorithm loves it,
my team loves it and I love it.
We put a lot of love into these videos.
Also hit me with a yes in the comments below,
introduce yourself.
If there was something confusing
about the three principles, post it there,
I'm happy to answer questions as well.
And lastly, remember, everyone needs a strategy
for their life and their business.
When you are with us, yours is gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK.
I'll see you in the next episode.
(soft music)