Mike Del Ponte created Soma water pitcher after getting frustrated with his Brita filter. The speaker interviewed 2,000 entrepreneurs and found the best business ideas start with one specific problem you experienced, then solve it for everyone else facing the same thing.
I interviewed over 2,000 entrepreneurs. The one question that every entrepreneur gets over and over again is, where'd you get your idea? The best answer I ever got came from Mike Del Ponte, who made these beautiful Soma water pitchers. I said, where'd you get the idea for a water pitcher? And he goes, I had one of these Brita filters and I put water in the top and then it came down and took forever. I poured it into a nice little bottle, water started splashing, and I said, this can't go on. I noticed that people didn't like the Brita pitcher on their table. After a few attempts, I came up with this idea to replace Brita with a beautiful water pitcher. The key lesson in that is you have to take all your experiences and sum them up into one story. What we're looking for is a story that encapsulates your why, your reason. And so the best way to do that is to say you were doing a thing, you encountered a problem, and if you can't do you had a problem, then you find someone else you care about who had a problem. And since no one else was solving it, you were gonna solve it. And as a result, here is a solution for other people who experience this. That's the answer.
