I am of the mind that a new business should fill a need in order to succeed. Generally, it is difficult, if not impossible to create a market for an item after inventing it- just on the merit of “it’s cool”. It may be that you are filling a need for a smaller, faster device, or a better service, but every business should fill a need. It should fit some hole in the market, that is either not currently being filled, or not being well-served.
When I set out to start Extension of You Home Care in Apex- near Raleigh, I decided to start the business because I saw clear opportunities in the market for improvement. I could see a lot of opportunities, and low-hanging fruit, such as the fact that so many employees of current home care businesses are treated as 1099 employees. This is borderline illegal, as in home care, you are specifying when someone comes to work, what they do, how to do it, and every aspect of their job. If that doesn’t meet the qualifications of employee, I’m not sure what does. There are tons of other things I saw as opportunities from a client perspective, such as using technology for tracking hours, and maintaining a notebook to communicate between caregivers, and also so the client’s family can get a log of what’s going on.Everything we did was because we saw an opportunity in the market, and because it’s the right thing to do.
When developing the next bit of technology, it’s important to keep in mind that your end users are going to have to be able to look at your device, program, or app, and be able to tell themselves “I need that!”, that it fills a need that they either realized that they had, or shows them that they needed this item before. Think of cell phones adding cameras, and becoming smarter. it just makes sense to make it a one-stop-shop for most things. It’s a portable office. People get that, and are willing to pay for the convenience of the portable office in a pocket. The device fills a need.
So, what about you? What business ideas do you have that fill a need in the market? How do you get them to market? Do you have what it takes to do it? Do you think that a new business should fill a need?
