Startups Grow From an Idea

E.J. Zain
3 min readSep 1, 2020

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Forget the apple a day — like that’s great for your health physically but an idea a day is what gets me more excited to wake up each day. If a new idea for business or art doesn’t come my way each day I don’t sweat it. It will come.

If you have had great ideas but didn’t really know if it would work as a business or even a project on the side there’s a wealth of online help you can get to figure out the viability of your idea(s).

Have you thought of a business that would help others solve a problem? Is it something that has scalability or something easily commoditized?

My latest idea I’m giving away for free: I would really love some custom earbuds ’cause nothing stays put in my earholes!

I thought: what if I could use whatever is in that dental plaster to make a mold of my ear holes and put the wires through that myself…(research on plaster molding)

I’d have to open up earbuds and see what’s inside — to see what it’s made of, how it works, and how easy hard or replicable it would be to do this for each ear. (research on ear bud parts and sources)

Then I thought, hearing aids! How are those made and aren’t they customized? (research on hearing aids)

Then I thought, much like those little rubber nubs that fall off of some brands of ear buds, what if I just sold a kit that replaces those. It could be do it yourself at home? (research ear bud structure specs for compliance)

I’ve tucked that idea away for now, but welcome your opinions!

More importantly, I came across this in my inbox and thought to share — it’s an application for funding for women founders. I’m posting it here if you are curious about startups and how they’re judged for funding by #angelinvestors.

1) there is a sample #pitchdeck — for those of you who haven’t heard of that it’s exactly as written — it’s a visual “deck” that defines the vitals — who what when where and why of your business idea hence the “pitch” part. When I had the “educational opportunity” to be behind the scenes of a local startup that made it to Capital Factory, Tech Stars and ultimately Shark Tank, I researched a lot of pitch decks. You can easily do it on Google Slides for free, yourself. I had to do a pitch deck for a SCORE contest and it was something I’m glad I did even though I didn’t win.

2) There is also a points sheet used by potential investors that is how they judge your business for funding.

Lastly, there is an APPLICATION for Women founders: this is an exciting opportunity to have your startup funded by Beam Angel Network: https://womenataustin.org/beam-founders…

Please share if you know any ladies who would like to know about this opportunity!

Beam Angel Network invests in high-potential, women-founded companies. We are committed to creating an uncomplicated funding experience for our founders, with clear status updates + constructive feedback.

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E.J. Zain
E.J. Zain

Written by E.J. Zain

Entrepreneur and writer based down South. Spinner of tales and learning addict. Always got time to talk biz, art, life and love.