A playbook for Generating Business Ideas

9. FDIC for Bitcoin
Insurance and warranty markets for various products are huge. People like
reducing risk. We have insurance for other assets; why not one tailored to the
needs of Bitcoin owners (exchanges or individuals)? This is already starting to
happen but it’s still early, and I think there’s enough upside.
According to Business Insider, “One of the reasons that people trust retail banks
for storing their money is that in the United States, those institutions are backed
up by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC). Even if a bank
collapses, customers can be reasonably sure that they won’t lose their full
deposit.”
Many bitcoins are stored offline for safety. The term used for this practice is
“cold storage.” I imagine there could be demand to insure bitcoin stored in cold
storage. Again, there’s demand to store many other things.

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Section 3: How to Start a Business
The third and final section of this book covers some additional information you
will need in starting a business. Topics include the first steps to take after
coming up with a business idea, customer development and how to use it to
validate your ideas efficiently and effectively, how to analyze and vet an idea,
how to decide if you want to pursue it, and some marketing and sales principles
you can use to acquire customers. At the end of this chapter, I’ve included a
brief case study on how I started three businesses in three months at the
beginning of 2014.

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Chapter 9: The First Step to Take After
Coming Up with a Business Idea
I’ve been looking for business ideas and starting businesses since I was a kid. In
middle school I even had a business wholesaling vending machine goods, hah.
As I grew older I began thinking of more complex, technology driven ideas.
After coming up with such ideas, the first thing I would usually do is ask a few
friends and family who I consider to be smart, and whose opinions I appreciate.
After learning about Lean Startup methodology and
customer
development,
I
learned that’s not actually the best thing to do after coming up with an idea. I
learned that
the
only
opinion
that
matters
is
the
customer’s
.
While my friends and family may be pretty smart, and some even
entrepreneurially savvy, they don’t actually affirmatively know if people would
want what I was thinking of marketing. I learned that one of the most important
factors to consider was if it’s something that people want.
Yes, there are many other strategic and personal considerations; however, if it’s
not something people want, then no strategy or marketing angle is likely to make
it work. Conversely, if there is something that is truly of value to customers,
many of the challenges associated with building a company, including customer
acquisition, partnerships, etc., may be alleviated.
So, the first step to take after coming up with a startup idea is to talk to your
customers. Talk to, and more importantly, listen to, the customers that your
product or service would be serving to see if they like your idea. It’s a process
called customer development.
Customer development is practiced to validate that you’re solving a problem for
someone, and that they see your idea as a viable solution.
Lean Startup and customer development also give a more effective process for
coming up with ideas. It’s a process driven by meeting customer needs and using
customer development to gain insights that inform product decisions.

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The key takeaway of this section is that answers to questions about ideas come
from getting feedback from customers through structured interviews and
experiments. I go into specific tactics you can use to test ideas and conduct
customer interviews in my
book
and
video
course
. In this next section, I will
give a deeper explanation about what customer development actually is and why
it’s so valuable.

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Chapter 10: What is Customer
Development and Why Should
Entrepreneurs Practice It?
The following chapter explains what customer development is and how it can
help you with your business idea.

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