Disney Method of Thinking, Building Your Startup Idea (Part 1)
By: Obasan Taiwo James-Yakub
Tags: Startup

From fantasy to reality; Priorities & Value🤯

CAVEAT: I am currently on a journey to build a very interesting financial product with Fundall (we will get to this later) that started from what could be seen as a fantasy to getting validation from users. I am not perfect, made a lot of mistakes and not yet gotten a hang of everything to be the perfect startup CEO as it is a lifelong journey of learning, unlearning & relearning. However, here are some things I have learnt from getting the real hang of the realist product that matches everyone’s ideal world. Do well to enjoy and I would appreciate your feedbacks;

I would be dividing ideal to reality into stages but most times, these stages do not follow as listed. Many times, you jump from stage 1 to stage 3 then you start again from 1, whichever way you choose to move, the goal is to always move, learn and rebuild.

For your startup idea to be successful, you need these three people;

Dreamers; what should we build? Realists; How should we build? Critics; Why should we build? Get more Realists who can execute because it is only the EXECUTERS that win the market! #Startups #ideas

The Dreamer Stage: Imagining what your ideal world should look like… Here’s the most interesting thing for every Founder trying to innovate or build new things..

At Fundall, we always imagined a world where people didn’t have to worry about the rigours and complexities of personal finances either as an individual, family or businesses. We believed that making money is hard enough to get people into the worries of managing it, we wanted to build an app that is smart enough to become the financial partner of everyone.

we at different stages thought of different ideas that can make this a reality. It was a fantastic idea but the question of ‘whose reality that would become”.

Do people even earn enough to think of managing money,

Brainstorming stage: the question, “going by your present constraints, what and how would you build your ideal world?” Here’s where the ingenuity and ART of every good founder and startup lies.

Collaborative thoughts: how would you build if there are no constraints…. Here’s how you move create a bigger vision, then a path from your constraints ideal to the unconstrained.

Realist stage: Your limited resources helps you sharpen your priorities, launch your “what to build”.

You have to make bargains, trade off, set up your team to make negotiations for each idea, push them to users in questionnaires and interviews… Don’t force your ideas, the magic here is to LISTEN & LEARN.. Your ideal world might not be everyone’s IDEAL

Execution STAGE: Biggest challenge for most founders because he is the REAL work and why you are called the chief EXECUTIVE officer. You have to hire the right people, manage resources optimally, get the right tools, build the right business for your ideal….

You have to learn how to learn the skillset or hire someone who can facilitate your ideas and bring them into reality.

Build a Plan then criticise; How should you build it? What will the idea outcome look like for users, how will it impact each user, what is the unit economics like? What process can scale and who really needs your product.

Get critics to evaluate your idea, you need more negative reviews to understand what the problem really is then iterate to reach product market fit than a bunch of positive reviews that make the bad linger too long.

This is part one of the many other parts to come, I’d be updating the article as I continue on the journey and I hope you have learnt a thing or two. You can reach out to me via taiwo.obasan@fundall.io or on twitter.

Get enough cash as you want while you go: You don’t have all the money to burn and you must also learn to go from one stage to another with much prudence to get as much revenue as you can if you are