Daniel Lubetzky knows firsthand that great business ideas can sound far-fetched at first.
But the “Shark Tank” investor and Founder of Kind Snacks says entrepreneurs shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss their most outlandish ideas, because they are the ones who can grow into the most successful companies.
“These crazy things — that’s when the Kind bar comes out, the Ring machine that Jamie Siminoff invented — it has to come from thinking outside of pushing yourself,” he said, citing his company’s Kind snack bar and the smart doorbell company that Amazon acquired for about $1 billion in 2018.
The business world is littered with such examples. Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, has said that people thought this was true.crazy” to imagine strangers staying over at each other’s homes. And Spotify founder Daniel Ek has described the company’s original goal – to make every song instantly and legally available – as a “impossible idea.”
Ahead of the launch of his “Build or Break” podcast on September 3, Lubetzky shared with Business Insider his three-part framework for turning any business idea—no matter how outlandish—from a brainstorm into reality.
1. Be curious and creative
“When you brainstorm, all you have to do is brainstorm,” Lubetzky said. “You shouldn’t allow filters, because it almost seems like you have to look for the dumbest idea.”
He said founders should go beyond the obvious options and put every idea on the board, no matter how unrealistic it may seem at first. The goal is to escape conventional thinkingbecause original concepts can arise there.
“The crazier you get, the more you put on your plate,” he said. “You can’t filter anything out because you have to push yourself outside that box to come up with something that no one else has ever come up with.”
2. Be a consummate critic
Then comes the critical phase.
After leaving the brainstorming session, founders should interrogate the ideas that remain with discipline, Lubetzky said.
They must consider whether they have the necessary skills, whether customers want the product, whether the economy works and whether competitors could do better.
“You take a break and then start applying all the filters,” he said. “Do I have what it takes to do this? Are these the skills needed, and do I have all those skills? Is the correlation between input and output worth it? Does the consumer really want it? Isn’t there other competition that can do it better?”
This stage requires founders to be strict about their own ideas.
“You have to apply twenty filters and ask very difficult questions to clean up your filter brainstorm list and focus on what is most creative, but you can also make it happen,” Lubetzky said.
3. Be a committed crusader
Finally, once an entrepreneur has put an idea through that “intellectual trial by fire,” he must stop second-guessing himself and execute on it, Lubetzky said.
“If you still believe your idea is worth pursuing, when you’re ready, you need to move from being a critic to being a believer,” he said. “And you just have to execute it, no matter what.”
Lubetzky said the framework applies beyond startups. People can build companies, inventions, schools or bridges between groups, he said, but they also have a choice in how they use their ideas and energy.
“We can all be builders or destroyers,” Lubetzky said. “It’s up to us to decide whether we wake up in the morning and try to drive each other apart,” or use those tools “to solve problems together.”
