Very good point. I should probably do a full follow-up. A few thoughts for starters:
1) Listen carefully to what people say about their problems
2) Use your intuition as well as logical analysis
3) If a customer discovered you, that's a great opportunity
Which makes me think of customer development... And how difficult it can be to sort through which feedback matters and is worth iterating around and what you should ignore. I think the biggest successes of recent times, Inatagram and Facebook just had an innate sense of what their users wanted.
'But you also need to spot, grab and run with opportunities. Not many do. Don’t be that person.'
Seems like great advise, with the benefit of hindsight. The contrary position is risking spending your time with something that will never come to fruition, whilst the real opportunity presents itself elsewhere. There are no easy answers, at least none you can possibly pare down to a single statement.
I have a different perspective. There is opportunity all over the place. User experience is crap most of the time, security poor, solutions to real customer problems weak.
The skill we need to develop is the ability to identify when a problem is ripe for solution. That is real opportunity, and there is a lot of it out there.
Absolutely grab a great opportunity when you see one. But if you miss it, the next one will come along in another five minutes.
Opportunities never stop showing up to those who live in a mindset of possibility. It's more an issue to validate which opportunities people want, and are willing to pay for. This remains the single biggest challenger any aspiring technical founder faces.
Opportunities likely seem few and far between for those who entertain, feed a mindset of doubt. Doubts slay all possibilities if you let them.
It's best to have a middle of the ground approach to remain open to possibilities and let them eliminate themselves through a idea validation process like finding product-market fit.
Thanks Colin for this piece. I agree with your view on grabbing opportunities and yet I often allow this belief to live in my unconscious mind without a speaking role. Articles like this help to make the topic explicit and by doing so they allow oneself to refocus on a key to personal success strategy that is both simple and elusive all at once.
In any event, best of luck in grabbing your opportunities. I must run now so as to grab my own opportunities. Cheers and talk soon.
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[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 17.6 ms ] threadSeems like great advise, with the benefit of hindsight. The contrary position is risking spending your time with something that will never come to fruition, whilst the real opportunity presents itself elsewhere. There are no easy answers, at least none you can possibly pare down to a single statement.
The skill we need to develop is the ability to identify when a problem is ripe for solution. That is real opportunity, and there is a lot of it out there.
Absolutely grab a great opportunity when you see one. But if you miss it, the next one will come along in another five minutes.
Opportunities likely seem few and far between for those who entertain, feed a mindset of doubt. Doubts slay all possibilities if you let them.
It's best to have a middle of the ground approach to remain open to possibilities and let them eliminate themselves through a idea validation process like finding product-market fit.
Too many doubt worshippers around = too much thinking and not enough learning by doing.
In any event, best of luck in grabbing your opportunities. I must run now so as to grab my own opportunities. Cheers and talk soon.