A Lesson from Stasher, the Startup that raised $1.1 million watching bags.

I was listening to an episode one of Monocle’s podcasts, The Entrepreneurs; an interview with the CEO of Stasher, a left luggage service for tourists in Europe. There was one thing that stood out to me at the top of the interview: The CEO, Jacob, discussed having regular brainstorming sessions with his co-founders Matt and Anthony. They came up with lots of ideas, most of which were bad. But, it is a great example of how important it is to take your “blinders” off when considering investing time or money in a business idea like this start-up did.

If you ask most successful entrepreneurs, they almost never will tell you that they started with the perfect idea and solution and “It just worked and everyone wanted to buy it…” Most of them will probably tell you they discovered the right business idea from talking to their prospective customer and finding out where the true need lay that people were willing to pay for.

If you’re an entrepreneur on your journey to discovering the right business idea: Don’t get discouraged if your early ideas fail: keep iterating and testing. Most importantly, talk to people. Talk with people who are buying from you, talk with people who you want to buy from you, and talk to people you trust who you know will give you honest, critical feedback that helps you grow your knowledge and understanding of your business.

Don’t be afraid to start talking about your ideas out of a fear someone will steal them. The likelihood that you are the first person to think of it is astronomical: More likely, the reason that no one has likely done it is because it is hard to do.