#BuiltAroundAdversity

In the last few years, we've faced a number of events which have impacted our lives drastically. Most people suffer as these events force us to change the way we live and approach our regular lives.

On the bright side, these changes become a boon for certain startup sectors, pushing startups into a hyper growth cycle. Be it Demonetization which put Digital Payment providers like Paytm into fifth gear, or be it the current Covid pandemic which has propelled Edtech/Epharmacy/Eretail or other "E" sectors into hyper growth.

This brings us down to a question, should startups look to build around a pain-point which may not be as severe at present, but is likely to escalate down the line. Some examples can be

- increasing crime due to a slowdown and unemployment

- targeting of a particular religious group

- the Govt. cracking down on other personal assets like jewelery, gold

- major cities not having water to sustain

Building with this view, it sounds a bit like a gamble, but who knows!!!

Looking for the Perfect Startup Idea

The best way of finding a startup idea is through experience. Sure, you can read about different Industries and do your research and come up with an idea. However, I feel if you can experience and identify a genuine problem, you feel more confident and passionate about the idea as you are a potential customer yourself. You tend to understand this idea better.

So now that you have identified an idea, should you pursue it? I guess before deciding, you should consider the following:

Passion: Do you feel like you are extremely passionate about the idea and really believe in solving the problem you have identified. Starting a company is a long and tiring process. Passion is what can see an entrepreneur through.

Skill Set: With the passion, a entrepreneur requires skill sets to execute well. If you feel you do not have or cannot put together the skill sets required, you should hold on before deciding to jump in.

When you develop a mindset of finding and exploring new ideas, you will tend to see a lot of gaps you can potentially fill. Be very sure which one to pursue and which ones to leave. Once you jump in with an idea, there should be no looking back.

The Birth of the Idea - HALLLP

So now that my college was finalized, me and my wife started planning what all we needed to take with us. We started reading up more about life in Tilburg. On reading, we realized that we needed to buy stuff like a bicycle, some crockery, mattresses etc. Other than this, we would also require other services such as learning the Dutch language, house cleaning from time to time and so on.

I started searching how I can avail these services. I found a few classified sites and some local businesses which were offering this. However, as is the case with classifieds portals, there were a lot of listings and most of them were quite old. This got me thinking and I felt a need for a service which could help people like me who are looking to avail different services.

This led to the birth of the idea, which was to create a ‘buyer companion app’. Any person looking to avail any services can post them on the platform and people offering them can reply back. On thinking of what name to keep, since our core idea revolves around helping people, we decided to call it HALLLP (3 Ls because of the availability of the domain J).