STOP Selling Ideas Without Proof

Prove it. If you've got a great idea for a new product or service you think will change the world, you have to prove it. You've gotta prove that what you're saying is right, that what your idea is is gonna work, and if that happens, you're gonna get customers, you're gonna get media attention, you're gonna get investors, you're gonna get potential acquisition targets from companies. They're gonna wanna be a part of you because it works. But if all you have is a theory or an idea, it's not gonna take off. You need to prove it. I got a question from one of my YouTube viewers, love you guys, uh, Srinivas, I hope I pronounced that properly, saying, uh, Evan, thanks for all your videos. I got an idea which can bring the email concept to the next level and I can contribute in many ways. I want to sell this thing to Google, Hotmail, Yahoo. I don't know how to approach them. Thanks in advance. You gotta prove it. You gotta prove that this thing works. The best thing you can do is go out, build some kind of application that can sit on top of Gmail or Yahoo or Hotmail that proves that your concept of email works. There's a couple that I've used, I forget the name of it now. Boomerang is one that I've used. So Boomerang is a tool that lets you send email later. So I could create an email and I don't want it to send right now, but I want it to send next week, in 2 hours, next month. I can send it to myself, I can send it to whoever I'm emailing, and it's an add-on tool that you can build into Gmail. I don't know if they've done it for the Outlook, Hotmail. You need to start building momentum. Whatever your idea is for email is great, but you need to start building something that shows that it works, and you can use the existing infrastructure and build on top of those companies' email clients to start building traction. You need to show people want to use this, that they're getting real results from it, that people would hopefully be willing to pay for a premium package of this. When you do that, you start getting interest from the media, you start getting interest from investors, and companies like Google, Yahoo, Hotmail, whoever will be interested in potentially buying you. Here's the thing that happens, okay, when a company wants to acquire a business Usually what they'll do is they'll look at, if it's a technology company, they'll look at their CTO, they'll look at their Chief Technology Officer, and they'll say, "How long will it take to do this?" This is what I had to get into when I sold my software company, okay? The company that bought us basically looked at their own department and said, "How long will it take us to do what they've done? To do what my company did?" Both in terms of creating the technology and getting the customer acquisition and the time to market. How long would it take us to replicate it? It may take 6 months, it may take a year, it may take 2 years. Then they put a value on that. Okay, it's gonna take us, you know, 6 months and X amount of dollars, so that to us is gonna cost this amount of money, this is how much we can afford to go out and acquire the company for. That's the decision. So for you to get your lead, for you to get interest, you have to get some good technology that works, and you've gotta get people using it. You gotta get some momentum with it. And quite often it's gonna be the company who's not number one. This is the biggest mistake that I've ever made in my business, ever. In my business career, this was my single biggest mistake, was I targeted the wrong company. I knew that I wanted to get my company sold. There was a lot of, of acquisitions happening in my industry, and I knew it was time to sell it. And I went after the number one company in the industry. I went after the top player. So for you, it would be going after Gmail, right? Of the three, Gmail's the biggest. It's going after Google. The number one guy rarely is interested in acquiring to grow, 'cause they're already at the top. The company that ended up being the biggest player in my space that I completely ignored was the number four player. They raised a huge fund, they raised $800 million to go out and start buying companies. And they talked to us, they talked to me about my company. And I was one of two finalists. And they ended up buying my biggest competitor for $40 million. And that could have been me if I was more prepared. I was geared towards a different company. So if you want to get bought out, think about who's trying to challenge Gmail, who's trying to challenge Hotmail, Yahoo, who wants to leapfrog over them and take your technology and take your customers to help them gain an edge. Those are the guys who are going to pay big money for you. But you've got to prove it first. Nobody's going to buy you out off just an idea. And for those of you watching, you have a technology concept, you have any idea to grow a business, people will not pay attention unless you've got some traction and you prove it. When I was in the VC world, I got business plans thrown at me, tons of business plans. People wanted funding, people wanted us to help them build a business and get acquired. If all you had was an idea, your idea was getting thrown in the garbage can. You had to have momentum and traction. You had to have some customers. You didn't have to be making a lot of money, but prove to me that somebody's willing to buy what you have. One person. Even if one person bought what you had, you'd be ahead of 90% of the companies that we saw. Get some momentum, get some traction, prove that your idea is working even on a small scale. And then you become an interesting acquisition target, investment target, customer target, media target, and so on. You got to prove it. Believe. For those of you watching, you like the video, please give it a thumbs up below. It always makes me want to do more for you. And leave a comment below. Let me know what you think. You like the video, you didn't, leave it below. You got a question for your company, I'll make a video response. Leave it in the comments below. Thank you so much. Venga, síguese.