In the past year, we have worked with two teams, taking them from the -1 to 0 phase, and have met multiple founders who were in the figuring out phase of starting up. Through our interactions, we realised that there are two questions that we commonly get asked -

• What is the -1 to 0 phase of starting up?
• How do you go from -1 to 0?

The -1 to 0 stage of starting up is the stage of deterministic ideation where you are convinced that your next step in life is starting up but you’re still figuring out everything around it.

The 0 to 1 journey of company building is all about finding a (potential) product-market fit by going from point a (current state) to point b (temporary end state).

However, the -1 to 0 is a lot more difficult, it’s about navigating through The Ball of Chaos. This phase is about finding the point b from an unclear point a.

This stage is all about building conviction on the idea, the problem, the market and the opportunity; but most importantly in yourself

The two teams that we worked with were in different stages of their -1 to 0 journey -

• The first team had an insight, but needed support to fine-tune the idea, identity ICP, GTM, etc.
• The second team was brainstorming on multiple ideas and needed support to evaluate which idea to peruse.

And in the process we realised that there is a method to the madness and the steps can be broken down, into a framework, to potentially get you through this phase -

Everything starts with an idea insight

In a rapidly evolving world where we can see the impact of technology in every field of work, it is easy to land on “unbounded” problem statements like - using AI to revolutionise healthcare, robots to automate manufacturing, etc. However, if its easy for you to get excited by such problem sets, its easy for millions of other founders too. What’s truly difficult is to find an insight or some sort of earned knowledge into the problem. There are a handful of ways to land on the insight -

• Living through the problem and seeing the challenges first hand. This will enable you to understand what isn’t working and why haven’t incumbents been able to build something that is working.
• Spending time with your future customers. This will help you understand what the buyers really want, where the gaps are, and what are willing to pay for.

It’s very easy to get stuck in research loops, opportunities might look exciting in theory.