

Do I have to do a startup in my area of experience? - codegeek

I work in financial technology in my day job but lot of startup ideas that I get are not necessarily related to financial tech. I have heard/read that you should usually try something in an area where you know what you are doing. Now I know there are exceptions or outliers. But in general, what do you guys suggest? For example, lets say hypothetically I might have an idea around CRM but no experience whatsoever. Would you ever jump into a startup like that ? Of course, I would commit more than 100% if I do but the question is: should I?
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pg
No. You have to work on a problem you know exists. That usually requires some
at least indirect experience in the domain, but it doesn't mean the domain has
to be your main area of expertise.

For example, if you work in finance and notice that the company you work for
can't find a teleconferencing service that does what they need, it would be
fine to start a startup to build that.

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codegeek
Well put. That clears my mind block. Thanks.

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bazookaBen
start from what you know. You'll find that the deeper you get, the more you
learn about other areas too

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l3amm
In general I think that working in an area you have experience in makes things
smoother especially in the beginning. You know the pain points without having
to do any research and have some initial "instinct" that points you toward
potential solutions.

However, I strongly believe the most important thing for an early-stage start
up is passion around the space/solving the pain points. The main reason is
that working in a start-up is really hard and, at times, soul-draining. If you
hit that depression phase and you aren't 100% committed to solving the problem
you'll never pull out of the death spiral.

That being said, if you're passionate, you don't have to be an expert as long
as you commit to becoming an expert quickly. Tons of breakthroughs happen when
intelligent novices enter a space without the preconceptions of the existing
leaders.

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codegeek
good pointers. Thanks

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aleprok
I say no, because you would need to employ someone with the experience and
this employee might tell you about existing solutions for the problem you are
trying to solve and you might find that the competition in the market is
harsh. Though you can always learn and gather experience from the area your
problem is at, but this takes more time and money than finding someone else to
do the work for you and you might still run into the same problem of existing
solutions.

But then again if you know little bit about the field and can do your market
research before continuing further to gain experience or to employ someone go
ahead and do the market research for your business idea then you know if your
idea is worthy of going forward.

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lewisgodowski
Same sort of situation here. Used to study aerospace engineering in college,
then transferred to a new school to study music technology. Met a great co-
founder and we'd been working on a startup specifically centered around the
arts, but it fell apart as the school year came to an end.

Now that summer has started, we've begun work on a different startup (a new
type of search engine, sort of...), but it's kind of new territory. We're
pretty confident we're aiming at a fairly large target audience, but still
scared as this is completely outside our area of expertise.

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j_baker
You get to choose whatever kind of startup you (and your founders) want. At
the end of the day, all that really matters is whether or not you can build a
business off of your idea, not whether you have relevant experience.

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jfoster
Sometimes it might be good to have no experience. It could make it easier for
you to see the status quo from a fresh perspective. It could also mean that
you end up reinventing failed solutions, though.

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michaelpinto
you should do what you have a passion for doing.

do you have a 100% passion for CRM?

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codegeek
CRM was just a hypothetical example I was using. So no. not really CRM. But I
am passionate about learning and teaching. Got a few ideas bouncing and even
working on a side project related to learning.

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michaelpinto
there may be other factors in your life, but i think if you have a real
passion it's certainly worth exploring!

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samstave
No. You need to be able to execute in your area of interest.

