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Greetings all,

In this week’s episode of Ventures, my guest Prof. Yanto Chandra and I talk about the implications of Web3 for global entrepreneurship. We discuss his background PhD work in rapidly growing international businesses, his professorship in Hong Kong teaching entrepreneurship, his thoughts about how NFTs and DAOs are changing the venture-building game around the world, and why smart and thoughtful regulation is vitally important for the future of the space.

Check it out: How NFTs and DAOs changed entrepreneurship forever :: with Prof. Yanto Chandra

Identifying solid venture ideas

At this point in my career of venture building/investing for almost 20 years, I’ve heard many thousands of ideas for startups. There still remains a general population impression that ideas are valuable; every week I hear pitches from people who are extremely convinced their idea is amazing.

However, ideas without a plan for execution are worthless (or worse, they are net liabilities because they suck time away from other things the entrepreneurs can/should be doing).  

One of the most common traps is the lack of founder-product fit. If a founder doesn’t have the practical ability to recruit a team, raise money, build a product, and execute an effective growth/marketing strategy, then the idea isn’t valuable. Period.

Now, some of the best entrepreneurs I have worked with have taken their idea to another founder to run with, and with *that* new founder involved, the idea becomes amazing.  

So, in short, if you find yourself obsessing over an idea, I’d encourage you to spend time thinking practically about your ability to see the idea come to life and successfully acquire customers/users. This framework also helps you save time and “say no” to ideas in your head that would likely be a waste of your energy and mindspace. Yes, you can keep notes about these ideas and perhaps find another startup CEO to run with them, but by putting those ideas on the back shelf you will be able to help yourself identify the best ideas to run with.

Have a great rest of your week!

~Will