Park the distractions; Two of my all time favorite startup ideas

I'm using this blog as a diary to share my journey to build a company from "zero to one". Therefore, it is only fair to start by defining what I'm planning to build. Right? But not too fast... Before that, I have to talk about two other ideas, so that I can free my mind from their distractions. These two keep popping up and distracting me from the main product I'd want to build. At every moment of time, I have several ideas that have the potential to become a stand alone company and these mostly serve me as tempting distractions, especially when they are the two of my all time favorite ideas. By way of writing about them, I'm parking these other ideas so that I can continue with my journey without distraction #essentialist. May these two become someone else's journey in one shape or another!
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• Sales pipeline management services subscription: many new companies are built by technical founders who do not know neither believe in formal processes to sell their product. Recently, I had a chance to talk to a technical founder who told me about the founding team who are very worried about hiring a sales VP. For one, they don't know if the sales VP can help moving the needle or not. They also don't know how to measure the performance of a sales VP and and how to even get him involved with the company. I also know of a start-up in the security space who have an experienced Business Development professional on their leadership team but the technical founding team believe he does not add any value to the company and all he does is just flying around and networking with prospects. They are of the school of thought that you build it and they will come. In my point of view, start-ups need to establish a formal sales process and pipeline management before they even hire a sales person. Studies shown companies that have formal processes in place to manage their sales pipeline have up to 28% higher revenue growth. However, many of the startups are not yet established enough to be able to afford a full-time person to establish selling processes and formally manage the pipeline on behalf of the founders. That's why there is a gap for someone who can become a trusted adviser to the founding team, establish company's selling process and run a weekly 1-hour pipeline management meeting or call where he/she forces the founding team to formally talk about and review the status of all their prospects and leads and discuss the next steps to convert them to a deal. The trusted adviser can then get a cut of the final closed deals. The service could productized into a platform or start platform agnostic. 

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• A merit-based recruitment platform: most good job opportunities out there are filled through non merit-based evaluation processes. So many of us have seen the examples of a new leader joining a company or a department and in no time you will find yourself surrounded by the guy's trustee team from his previous job or company. Too many of us have been passed on for a role that we were the most suited candidate in favor of the ex-coworker of the company's VP of X. Why is that? Because people judge merit based on real-life examples they have came across over the course of their careers and nothing replaces the power of a first-hand experience working with someone or getting the approval of someone who has worked with the candidate. Additionally the traditional resume and interview-based hiring processes minimize the role of merit in favor of "approval stamps" such as an Ivey school education, experience at Mckinsey or Google or having the title of "founder" in the candidate's past. In reality, not everyone who graduated from Stanford is better than other graduates. And not all Mckinsey and Google alumni have been responsible for the tremendous success by those companies. Every day quality candidates are rejected in the name of merit but based on a non merit-based system of networking and/or approval stamps. So the alternative is a recruitment platform that is anonymous to the hiring team. Candidates are validated by the platform for authenticity of their profile but then their name, resume, picture, and social profile are all hidden to the eyes of the recruiters. Selection process then becomes a "competition-like" system where the hiring team and recruiters post a real challenge or question and the candidates will all get an equal opportunity to submit their answers. The hiring decision can then be made based on real-life, relevant merits to the role rather than other distractions such as network, school, name, ...

So there you have it, my two all-time favorite business ideas and distractions. If any of the above inspires you, let me know and may these two become a journey to share. However neither of them get me excited enough to start a journey on my own. There is of course a 3rd idea, the "one" to my journey, the destination of my pursuit ...​ but you have to wait for the next post to read about it!