This Is Where Great Startup Ideas Come From

And these are the questions to ask

Joe Procopio
6 min readJul 10, 2023

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image by freepik

It’s the single question that I get from entrepreneurs the most often:

“Is my startup idea any good?”

Now, I never answer this question. Ever. Because at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what I think, or what some west coast venture capital firm thinks, or even what some shady incubator application reviewer thinks.

Instead, I ask my own question:

“What makes you think it’s good?”

That answer is critical. So how do you go about figuring it out?

Cool Ideas Versus Must-Have Products

We all want to love what we do, and chances are pretty good that if we love what we do, we’ll be successful with it. But there’s a cautionary tale I hear over and over again, even from experienced, successful entrepreneurs: The startup graveyard is littered with ideas that the founders ran with simply because they fell in love with the idea of the idea.

There’s nothing wrong with chasing a cool startup idea, or falling in love with a startup idea without any due diligence or R&D. But at some point, definitely before we get too far down the execution road, we need to take the time to validate the idea…

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Joe Procopio
Joe Procopio

Written by Joe Procopio

I'm a multi-exit, multi-failure entrepreneur. AI pioneer. Technologist. Innovator. I write at Inc.com and BuiltIn.com. More about me at joeprocopio.com

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