Boiling Your Company or Product Down to a Basic Idea

September 18th, 2008

Have you ever thought about some of the products you use?  If you really think about, most products are actually quite simple in nature.  If you are looking to start a company or build a product, start very simple, start from the basic idea and then build.

Here are a few products/companies boiled down to their basic idea:

  • coke is a billion dollar company that sells sugar water
  • craigslist is a site that lets you buy and sell stuff
  • the ipod is a product that let’s you listen to music anywhere you go
  • photoshop is a product that let’s you mess around with images
  • twitter is a site that let’s you tell people what you’re up to
  • windows is a platform to run your computer
  • mozilla is a tool that let’s you view the web
  • skype is a way to talk to people through your computer
  • techcrunch is a blog about technology
  • linkedin is tool to meet business professionals online
  • google is a search engine that let’s you find stuff online by typing words into a box

Yes, these companies, products are pretty advanced on the back end (eh, some of them are), but they all started with a simple basic idea that was built upon.  Notice how I was able to describe the basic idea of these companies/products in just a sentence?  If if takes you a paragraph to describe your basic idea then it’s not basic enough.

What’s your basic idea?  What other companies/products can you boil down to just a basic idea?

thanks for reading

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  • Robert Sanchez
    I'm hearing more and more of this 'basic' talk; and I like it!
  • hi robert, absolutely, without the basic you can never have the advanced. everything starts with basic.

    thanks for reading and commenting!
  • Ahhhhwwwww....what a cute baby
    Congrats for the blog!
  • thanks for stopping by and reading/commenting ronald, just a random pic :)
  • thanks for reading and commenting ronald!
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