Asking this question is a terrible place to start. I don’t know of many great ideas where the first question the creator asked was, “How can I make money from this idea?”

You’ve got to care about the idea and understand the problem you are setting out to solve first. Not in a naive , if I build it they will definitely come sense. But from a place of knowing that there is inherent value in what you plan to execute, for the audience that you want to serve.

If you start from the making money perspective you limit your ideas to what’s possible. You think in terms of the limitations and what the focus group wanted, and you kill what would have made your idea golden in the first place.

I recently heard Lina Ashar speak about how she founded the hugely successful Kangaroo Kids Education in India. She said if she’d listened to what the research told her the market wanted, she would never have gone ahead and launched her business.

Did Mary Quant, Banksy, Vidal Sassoon, James Dyson, Steve Jobs, Jessica Hische, Richard Branson, Tina Roth Eisenberg, Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Kriegar begin by asking, “How can I make money from this idea”?

There’s nothing wrong with caring about the money. Just care more about your idea.

Image by Toban Black.