When it comes to 100K Ideas, and your knowledge of our organization, you may have heard the term “Binder” or “Idea Assessment” thrown around. As this is one of our main services we offer, amongst a variety of other Next Steps, one may not know what this actually means or entails. Some may have questions such as: what is an Idea Assessment? What does an assessment include? How does this help me with my idea?, and many more. In this post, we will discuss what this assessment is, why it may benefit a potential or current client, and break down the content that helps individuals start along their entrepreneurial journey.
What is an Idea Assessment?
An Idea Assessment is the initial service that 100K Ideas provides, when a client brings in an idea. It is a compilation of research that includes relevant resources, needed skills, benchmark and industry information about the desired business or idea. This process starts with a meeting at 100K Ideas for a free intake, where the client sits down with two project managers, discusses their idea, and lets our staff know what they need help with. These needs could be a wide variety of things, and our project managers are trained in asking the right questions to clarify and solidify them, to provide the best services for each individual. After this intake, many clients will move on to an Idea Assessment, if our team finds it fitting for their needs. If this is chosen for an idea, the following list is what can be expected research that will be included in each:
Skills Checklist:
The skills checklist is one of the most important aspects of an idea assessment. Even if we are passionate about our idea, there are always some skills that are required to run a successful business that we could improve. This section of the binder supplies the client with resources to learn and grow in specific areas that are brainstormed during the intake, and after by project managers. Although project managers always tailor each section to each client’s needs, some common skills covered in this section are: finance, marketing, legal, networking/pitch deck, business administration.
Benchmarks:
Every idea will have some form of competition. Even if your idea is a brand new invention that solves a crucial problem, there is a way that people are currently getting by and/or navigating this issue. Project managers first search for direct, local competitors to a client’s idea; but if there aren’t any that fit that criteria, we look for those ways that people currently get around the problem that the client is solving. Looking at benchmarks is important because you need to know your competitors in order to make your idea unique. Clients can also learn a lot from looking at people that have been in business for a while.
Patent Findings:
100K Ideas does a patent search (mainly for products) to see if there are any past or present patents that may conflict with a client’s idea. It is important to remember that a patent only protects a product in the specific way that it is designed, not the entire idea for a product. Patents are also usually country specific, so once a US patented product is on the global market, companies in other countries may copy the product. It may be recommended that a client talk to a patent attorney in order to get true legal advice regarding obtaining a patent or to be sure if their idea conflicts with any current patents.
Trademark Findings:
A trademark search is compiled to be sure that the client’s idea name and/or logo is not already taken by another company. The client may be advised to change the name of their idea to prevent conflicting with an existing trademark. There are specific classes of trademarks that depend on the industry that a name is trademarked for.
Domain Findings:
Oftentimes, a client’s idea name is already taken for a website URL. If this is the case, the 100K Ideas team will offer alternative domain ideas to keep the same idea name. This could involve adding or subtracting words from the domain, or using a different domain extension.
Industry Demand:
This section focuses on statistical evidence of a demand, or lack thereof, for the industry that the client is entering. Depending on how specific or unique an idea is, usually determines how specific of evidence that is available for this section. An alternative route may be taken to look into the potential market size for a particular industry.
Market Trends and Market Analytics (SEO):
This section is a dive into specific keywords for Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
Market Trends is a look at the relative search volumes on Google. Market Trends also shows the top related keywords, as well as the states with the most searches for the given keyword. Market Analytics utilizes a service to take a deeper look into the competition for given keywords. This resource gives a more comprehensive overview for the usability of given keywords. This information is useful so that entrepreneurs can carefully craft their websites to appear at the top of search results. This resource gives keyword utilization information in a seamless format so that users can clearly see if a keyword is worth using.
Purchaser and End User:
There will always be a purchaser and an end user of an idea. These may be different, or often are the same. If the purchaser and end user are different, they will have different considerations and desirability factors that pertain to each. In this section, project managers point out a classification of these factors for both the purchaser and end user of the idea. (For a children’s toy, the purchaser would be someone like a parent/guardian and the end user would be the child.)
Complexity:
The starting and pursuing of any idea will come with complexities. In this section, project managers brainstorm and organize some barriers and considerations that clients should take into account when pursuing their idea. But, we don’t want to just give our clients a problem and no solution, so on this page we also compile resources to help get over these barriers. The next page of additional information also includes resources to help get over barriers. The considerations section may also contain some ideas to help with getting through the listed barriers.
Additional Information:
As each idea we see at 100K Ideas is different from the last, there’s no way that our template can serve all of someone’s needs. The additional information page is a place where our project managers can compile resources that don’t fit any of the other sections. This page is somewhat similar to skills checklist, but not all of the resources we gather necessarily pertain to a specific skill.
Problem Relevancy:
In our intake meetings, one of the most important questions we ask our clients is “What problem are you solving with this idea?”. When you really think about it, almost every product or service is solving some type of problem. The problem may be as simple as “This area doesn’t have a coffee shop” and so a client wants to put a coffee shop there because they know it is a frequently trafficked area; but this question should, in most cases, be able to be answered when talking about an idea. In the problem relevancy section, project managers look for evidence proving (or sometimes disproving) that the problem stated by the client exists. These could be statistically or anecdotally driven, but there are almost always articles online of people talking about the existence of problems that the client claims to be able to solve with their product or service. Going back to the coffee shop example, it may be looking at how many businesses there are in the area where the client wishes to put a coffee shop, and seeing where the closest coffee shops are. Project managers make sure to use reputable sources so that information is actually useful and actionable by entrepreneurs.
Financial Estimate:
It can be daunting to think about all of the costs that may come into play when starting a business, so the financial estimate page can be one of the most helpful for our clients. We take the time to research and list many of the potential costs that pertain to the establishment of each idea. We separate these costs into startup and ongoing costs, and give links to where we found each item, so that the client uses the idea assessment to make those purchases when the time is right, or even just to verify where we came up with the numerical estimates. We also include the potential revenue that the idea can generate (the price of each product or service), so that the client can more easily see how many products/services they would need to sell to start making profit (Revenue-Costs=Profit!!).
Next Steps:
The next steps section can be the most helpful section of the idea assessment, immediately upon delivery. In this section, our team comes up with actionable next steps that our clients could take today to further their ideas. These are always different depending on where the client’s current progress is. We always try to make these next steps as actionable as possible so that we don’t leave our clients wondering what to do next after they receive their idea assessment.
Relevant Resources:
In this section we not only list our partners, but we list some last additional resources for clients, that may include associations or other opportunities to learn and grow. Additionally, our Client Services Manager lists a relevant contact from our network that could further assist our client. This is a hand picked contact for each idea.
Key Elements:
The last section of our idea assessments, the key elements section, serves as a gauge for where each client is currently at, and shows how much room for progress they have. And, with the resources we give in the idea assessment, they are equipped with the information to get to where they want to be. Although each topic is on a scale of 1-10, each topic really has its own scale that is described below each scale. It definitely is not always 1 is the worst and 10 is the best. This is important to note when looking at the key elements section.
Idea assessments can be useful for people at all stages of development in their entrepreneurial journey, and can really be whatever the clients need it to be. Hopefully, this blog cleared up some questions that you may have had about what is included in an idea assessment. If you are interested in signing up for an intake meeting to get your own idea assessment, head here: https://znr.rod.mybluehost.me/get-started/ to start the process with us!
