How can you succeed in creating a new business idea?  You don’t need to be like Thomas Edison and invent a revolutionary product like the light bulb.  In fact, you can simply invent how to illuminate the light bulb without using electricity.  Indeed, your new business idea can be an innovative re-working of an old idea that venture capitalists appreciate.   

“Recycling” Ideas for Venture Capital

If your new business is seeking venture capitalist (VC) funding, you want to demonstrate your innovation and why your product will succeed in the marketplace.  The beauty of “recycling” and improving an existing product is that it already has a proven track record.  Inventing a widget that consumers have never used is risky, but making a popular gadget even more effective has a greater chance of success. 

What makes an old idea better?  Remember when photographic cameras used film and processing to record images and produce an image?  At some point, someone determined that images can be captured electronically in digital format, eliminating the need for post-processing of film.  Since then, digital photography has seen continued improvement in quality and detail.  Film cameras will soon be antiques, as all images, including video, will be recorded digitally because of this new and innovative process on an old idea.

The camera is not a new invention.  It’s been around for about 150 years.  But with the digitization of light capture, photography has been opened up to a much wider customer base.  Think of this as an inspiration point for how you can take your skills to make a proven technology even better – and ideally, how your idea will make an existing product even more popular among the masses.    

Using Old Ideas as an Inspiration Point

Think about your business idea.  Let us say that you are great at computer programming and can create a solid and applicable database design.  How does your idea improve upon the old one?  Databases are used everywhere.  Can you offer a revolutionary or innovative user interface?  Can you improve upon the speed at which your database functions? 

It’s perfectly acceptable to bring an old idea to a venture capitalist and ask for funding.  Old ideas have been serving this world quite suitably.   However, when you create your business idea and business plan, it needs to have sparkle and a creative twist that fills a niche in society and serves a large consumer base.  And yes, even you can succeed as an entrepreneur by making a better mousetrap!

Tags: angel investor, angel investors, better business idea, Find funding, startup funding, vc marketing plan, venture capital, Venture Capitalist

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 2:54 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.