In pursuit of the perfect idea
Finding an idea is easy.
They hang out in the shower, tapping at the back of your neck as you emerge into the day. They’re on the farm waiting for you in the harvest. And a whole bunch seem to be stuck in the bottom of wine bottles.
Some ideas fester, others fade. Some don’t feel like ideas at all, just a collision of technology with a fancy name. Music player + phone + computer = iPhone.
Ideas are so easy to find – birth, be nicked – that anyone can have one.
In fact, anyone can have multiple ideas. And multiple people have the same idea so often that it’s almost impossible to own one. Kicking yourself with “I had that idea!” is futile – ideas aren’t worth the invisible brain paper you jot them on. They don’t keep.
According to Whitney Wolfe, the team at Tinder couldn’t tell you whose idea it was to begin with. And really, is Tinder the tech or the branding? Which part is the idea? The swipe? The flame?
Ideas are like art. Is the beauty in the originality of concept, the skill of brush stroke or the imperfections of the artist?
Sometimes it’s that certain wrong-ness that makes ideas worth pursuing. Take Your Corps. Founder James Wards uses videogaming to help combat youth suicide in Southland. I can’t say I would have picked something as traditionally anti-social as videogaming to encourage team building and brotherhood, but it’s working. So, how can you define the right idea.
I can’t. And as the Chief Activator at COIN South, thankfully that’s not my job.
My job, and I’m pretty sure it’s one of the best in the South, is to meet people with ideas who want them to be more than just that. It’s to meet the makers turning ideas into things. The tinkerers. The techies. And then help the ideas grow.
In August 2019, I met Brian Smith. Brian had been sitting on an idea for years. It’d slowly been going stale in his brain. Someone, probably with ideas of their own, kicked Brian’s idea back to life and that’s when I met him. Working alongside COIN South and the great team at Great South, Brian now has a working prototype, a get-to-market strategy and a plan for investment. My bet is you’ll have his product in your Christmas stocking in a year.
It’s hard for me to imagine, but three years ago COIN South was just an idea. One of those unowned, why-hasn’t-this-been-done-before ideas. Fostered with the right team, and through the help of generous partners, COIN South has now supported and mentored over 100 businesses. Since August. We go through a lot of coffee.
We’re a start-up just like any of the others. And because we’re from Southland, we’re not rah-rahing in matching t shirts. We pick up the phone. We make things happen.
We don’t give you the answers, and most of the time we don’t know them. But we will help you frame the questions, so you can answer them yourself. We’ll help connect you with people you wish you’d run into in an elevator. And we’ll help you craft that elevator pitch.
If you’ve got an idea that can scale, or know of someone scheming in the wee hours who needs a cheerleader/a coach/a sounding board/a strategist/a directory service/a roadmap to investment, or even just someone to give a pep talk when the inevitable: “This is dumb, it’s not going to work” hits: get in touch. louise.evans@coinsouth.nz