Like many, Will began his entrepreneurial journey by solving a problem that existed in the industry of his day job. He and his co-founder, Chris, were working at a national bank when they realized companies were getting screwed when it came to accessing big data.

The only big data system, Bloomberg, forced customers into paying tens of thousands of dollars for the entire system- regardless of if they needed thousands of pages of data or one crucial statistic.

Will and Chris saw humungous potential in the field, however, they didn’t jump all in at once based on self-validation.

Will mentions the importance of pinpointing a market need prior to launching your business. Unfortunately, many people work hard to create both the problem and the solution. Rather, Millennovator’s should be asking their potential market questions to determine if they are feeling the same points others are.

Are you providing a solution for an existing problem or trying to create one? Have you done the due diligence in asking and researching how your market feels about said problem?

The duo entered a local pitch competition (please research this in your community and enter as many as you can afford to) called the Velocity Accelerator.

Turns out, they won the competition which included a decent amount of capital, resources, and mentorships.

In the episode, Will also mentions it wasn’t the $50k capital earnings that they benefitted most from. He also discusses 3 tips to seeking idea-validation prior to going all-in on a business concept.

Each of these 3 tips is nearly free and very easy to apply within your business today- regardless of if you have launched or are still in concept.

1. Enter a pitch competition

2. Find serial entrepreneurs and grab coffee to ask valuable questions (not pitch them)

3. Repeat #2 over and over again