The start of a start-up: The thrill of generating a new business idea

I recently had that burst of excitement every entrepreneur knows well.

It’s that first moment when you are struck – completely out of the blue – with an idea for a new business.

I wasn’t looking for it. I wasn’t planning on having it. It just suddenly hit me.

It’s a moment of both fear and excitement. Could it work? Has it been done? Why hasn’t it been done? How big is the market? Is there a sustainable competitive advantage?

Your mind starts racing through this seemingly random series of checks to see if it’s an idea worth pursuing for a moment longer.

You hope it is. You want it to be the next Facebook or Twitter. But you also need to be realistic. The chances of it happening are 3,000,000,000:1 and that’s probably conservative!

Anyway, a few days on, and I’m still at that stage of just letting the idea percolate around my brain. I’m flat out on other things and certainly don’t want to waste time pursuing something that won’t work.

So, for the moment, I’m happy to apply an old trick I learnt in the advertising industry – to let my brain play with it and have it come back to me when it’s ready.

But that flash of inspiration is really the absolute epicentre of commerce and entrepreneurship and it’s something I haven’t experienced in a little while.

It’s the fun part of being an entrepreneur.

Everything is wonderful and the possibilities are endless. The idea has yet to collide with the realities of critical thought.

It’s kind of like having kids. They start off being really sweet and innocent and love you to death. They run down the corridor with glee when you come home and hang off your leg.

Then they grow up. They get moody. They start having opinions of their own. They start hitting you up for more and more pocket money.

They argue and complain. (I’ll jump off the parallel. My eldest can now read!)

But the bottom line is that at the moment, I’m enjoying having a new idea. It’s exciting and I’m happy for it to stay young for a little while yet.