In this instructional video, Akeel Jabbar, GP and Investment Director at Horizon Capital, addresses the common challenge entrepreneurs face when trying to identify a viable business idea. He frames entrepreneurship as fundamentally about solving real problems and then outlines five concrete strategies for generating ideas: (1) look inward and identify personal frustrations or unmet needs; (2) talk to friends, family, or colleagues to uncover external pain points; (3) adopt a "sell shovels" mindset by providing tools or services that support booming trends (e.g., Bitcoin mining equipment); (4) examine existing products or services that are merely adequate and improve upon them, using the Starbucks example; and (5) draw inspiration from current news events or societal shifts, such as rising crime or data‑breach incidents, to spot emerging demand. Throughout, Jabbar shares personal anecdotes (his own journey from stock investing to SaaS) and practical prompts (asking potential users how much they'd pay). The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to like, subscribe, comment on how they found their own ideas, and watch future SaaS District content.
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Are you struggling to find your next big business idea? I get it. I mean, this is something that happens to every single entrepreneur. They're like, I want to get started. I want to start my own business. I just can't find out what is the right idea. How do I find the right idea that I know is going to make me money and that I know is going to be successful? And I understand there's so many ways to tackle this. And that's exactly why I created this video. We work specifically with SaaS companies, but this actually applies to any single business. All right. So stay tuned and I'll share with you guys 5 ways You can start generating new business ideas. Hey guys, my name is Akeel Jabbar, GP and Investment Director at Horizon Capital, where we work with B2B SaaS companies who are looking to take their business to the next level, right? We work with entrepreneurs every single day. Some of them are coming to us and saying, hey, we're looking to start a new business. We're looking to start a new SaaS. I don't know if I have the right idea. I just can't figure it out. I don't know if we're on the right track. Am I solving a real problem here? Remember, that's all this is about. A business is about solving a problem. That's first and foremost. Now, if you're thinking about, okay, I think I have some ideas, but I don't know what problem to solve. Here's a couple of ways you can look at it. All right? So the first thing, Is look at yourself, look inside, look at you. What are problems you're having on a daily basis or maybe something you're struggling with or you've been looking for every day and you just, you just get frustrated, right? You know, you're seeing this problem yourself and there's just no solution or you haven't found something that you like. So that could give you inspiration to go out and build it yourself. For example, when I built Horizon Capital, the main purpose at the time was how do I generate higher returns on my own capital? I started with investing in stock market, public markets. I was getting okay returns. Then I started investing into real estate. And from there I went into investing in physical businesses. And finally I learned about online businesses. And that's all we do right now is we focus on investing in SaaS businesses specifically where we get the highest amount of return and we understand what we're doing. So I looked at a problem inside, bothering me. How can I get higher returns? That led to one thing to another. And eventually we, you know, we built this company to get higher returns by investing in SaaS companies. So that's one way you can look at it. The second thing you can do is look outside, you know, talk to other people, ask them what are problems that they're having. Maybe it's your friend, maybe it's a family member, maybe it's a coworker that keeps complaining about a problem that they have. And then you're just seeing like they can't find a solution, they're frustrated. And that can maybe spark an idea that you're like, hey, I can actually do this. This is something I've done or something I know how to do or I know how to build for. And you can ask them, be like, hey, if I built this or if there was a solution, what would you pay? What would this be worth to you? And if I was to develop this business, would you be willing to pay? And you know, obviously capture that and start asking a lot of people. Take that and start asking if this is something that's recurring from other people that you're hearing from. So that's the second way is looking externally, talking to other people and finding out what problems they're having. The third way, here's a phrase that you might have heard of, you might have heard before: in the gold rush, sell shovels. So what do I mean by that, right? Like, let's take an example. When Bitcoin was hot a couple years ago, or even now, right, when it's, when it's, you know, blowing up and the numbers are growing and everybody's, you know, interested in getting involved, yes, you hear a lot of people getting rich by investing in Bitcoin. But, you know, the people who really got rich were the people who are selling the, the computer parts to people who are mining. Right. So maybe you can think of, okay, like I'm not going to invest in Bitcoin, but everybody's investing in Bitcoin. I don't want to take that risk. What I'm going to do is I'm going to sell these people who are doing mining. I'm going to sell— I'm going to source and sell them these computer parts and to help them make money. So if they're making money, I'm making money and I'm selling them the shovel to dig for gold, but digitally, obviously, where there's opportunity, where you see people making a lot of money and you can become a small part of it. But that small part of it could be a huge business in itself. Don't underestimate the value of selling a shovel, right? It seems so simple and so straightforward and, you know, probably something that's typically overlooked because it's not as hot as going out and mining for gold yourself, but you can easily become rich just by focusing on selling the shovel. So that's number 3. Number 4, look what's already out there and that's maybe outdated and maybe how you can improve it, right? So this is probably the most common one people overlook because they think they need something hot innovative or different. But the truth is there's so much out there that's doing okay, mediocre, and you can do a lot better job, right? Like let's look at Starbucks for an example, right? They're not the first coffee shop out there, right? There's literally been thousands, if not millions of different coffee shops before they came into play. But what they— when they came in the market, they focused on the product experience, the user experience, the— they don't have the best coffee out there. There was already a lot of good coffees, but it was kind of the whole package of what they looked at, the real estate, the experience of when you walk in, the smell of the coffee, how the barista will treat you when you walk in and remember your name. So all these little things that they focused on improving. So by the time you go through the entire journey, you felt impressed, but it was still selling coffee. So look for other opportunities. What are some other coffee businesses out there that you can start that are doing maybe okay, that haven't impressed you, and you feel you can overdeliver for the customers that you have. So that's number 4, taking something that's doing all right and just improving on it. Number 5, look at the news, look at events and get inspiration from them, right? So there's so much thing, you know, every week you're hearing new things that are happening and you can easily take inspiration from that to create your next business. Let's say crime is going up in your neighborhood, right? Or in your city, for some reason there's a spike in crime. And you're seeing a lot more robberies, a lot more assaults, a lot more police in the news. Maybe it's a security company, right? So think of, think of that, right? Security. If crime is going up, people are going to start thinking about investing in security and maybe it's setting up a security system for them and start selling that and say, hey, this is clearly, it's happening out there in the neighborhood. It's happening in our city. Let's offer these people a solution that's been obviously happening around them every single day, right? You can see this for, for example, online, There's been a lot of data breaches, right? People, you know, cybersecurity, people stealing data, right? There's so many ways. So it's the same thing with the in-person world where maybe security is an issue. The online space, there's just so much opportunity where, you know, data's being hacked, people are stealing, people are hacking other people's information and data, and there's so much business opportunities that you can create just off of that. So just for you, you're probably on Facebook right now, you're on YouTube, you're on social media, you're reading the news. Look at, well, look at what's happening. Look what you're seeing repetitively and maybe see if you can tackle a problem or build something today. All right. So there you have it, guys. Those are 5 ways where you guys can start looking at to start generating your own ideas. And I hope you guys can start building your next business. All right. So if you guys enjoyed this video, please like, subscribe, and comment below. I'd love to hear from you. How did you find your idea for your business? All right. Where did you find the idea? What gave you the inspiration and what problem were you solving? Whose problem are you solving? Was it your problem? Was it your neighbor's problem? Was it your coworker's? And how did you find your business idea? Thanks again for watching, guys, and see you guys on the next SaaS District video.
