Vishen Lakhiani walks through three questions before starting a business: What sucks in your world? Does it suck for lots of people? Can you stay passionate about fixing it? He used this framework for his first venture, a gluten-free farm-to-table pizza concept in New York City.
Chapters
In my first book, Do Cool Shit, I laid out the three questions I asked myself before starting any business. The first question is, what sucks in my world? For me, every time I ate regular pizza, I had stomach aches, bloating, gas. No, no, no, no. I still love the taste and flavor. I mean, pizza is actually considered a thalamus food, a brain food, because it has all the food groups. So if actually done right, it's considered a really good food. But it was made with bleach, flour, processed cheese, all this crap. And so there's got to be a better way. And so the first business I created was New York City's very first gluten free farm to table pizza concept. And so what sucks in my world? Question number one and then question number two is, does it suck for a lot of people? Because if it just sucks for me, then I'm a prima donna and, you know, and I'm just like super sensitive. And it's not, it's not really a market. But if one in five Americans eat gluten free, one in five Americans, lactose intolerant, these are real problems that suck for a lot of people. And so what sucks in my world? Does it suck for a lot of people? And, and the third question which is the most important is, can I be passionate about this for a really long time? Oftentimes we're just like, I'm gonna start another T shirt company because, like, I think dog memes are cool. I'm gonna do like a dog meme T shirt company. And then after like, literally five minutes, you're like, I'm not super inspired by this, so it has to be something that you're like, wow, I can be passionate about it. It sucks in my world. And I also believe the future of entrepreneurship is social entrepreneurship, which means that there has to be a give back.
