I was re-reading some marked pages in Art of the Start today. In the chapter on Rainmaking I was reminded of Guy’s concept on startups:
Sow many seeds. See what takes root and then blossoms. Nurture those markets.
He’s talking specifically about watching what your customers do with your product and being flexible enough to begin marketing to those new uses.
I was thinking about it from a slightly different angle and that is that when you are starting a business, you often start with a single vision of your great idea. As you are pitching it to different people and talking about it in general, invaluable feedback will come to you and it’s important to listen to it, evaluate it, and potentially integrate it into your plan. The ‘melding of the minds’ is an exciting thing to have happen – when you start talking about a great idea to someone and they ‘get it’ and start pushing back to you on other ways you can do it. It is an awesome experience. It would be a pity if someone were to be to narrow or single minded to pay attention to that kind of feedback. “See what takes root and then blossoms”
