Finding your next million-dollar idea isn’t luck—it’s a system. On this week’s Serial Entrepreneur Secrets Revealed, Colin C. Campbell and co-host Michele Van Tilborg celebrated the launch of our 12th monthly newsletter—this one themed Startup Summer—and dove into the feature article: How to Find Your Next Million-Dollar Startup Idea. The premise is simple: opportunities are everywhere, especially in a moment when AI is reshaping every function of business. The goal is to train your awareness, then run ideas through a repeatable vetting process.
Ideas die in notebooks. Prototype, name it, clear trademarks, grab the domain, mock the brand, show it to informed peers.
We start problem-first: people buy solutions, not “nice-to-haves.” From there, pressure-test scalability with our 1–5 index and free GPTs referenced in the newsletter. Can the idea expand beyond a single location, client, or capacity bottleneck? Colin contrasted inherently constrained models (e.g., a single campus school) with more scalable plays (products for those schools, or a software platform serving hundreds of them). The earlier you choose a scalable path, the bigger the long-term impact—what Colin calls the “Big Bang” effect of early decisions.
Next, build a moat. Defensibility can come from IP (design/utility patents, trademarks), distribution (owning Amazon/Chewy/Walmart lanes early), brand (becoming the category signal), or an X-Factor that removes a market bottleneck. Michele shared how PAW.com iterates on “ordinary” pet products until they’re extraordinary—multi-use, design-forward, and trend-aware—then defends position with channel strength and brand. Copying is a race to the bottom; being different is a race to the top.
Finally, act. Ideas die in notebooks. Prototype, name it, clear trademarks, grab the domain, mock the brand, show it to informed peers (not default naysayers), and use low-cost concept panels before big spend. Our newsletter also includes the monthly Time-to-Sell Index—now ticking up from 6.8 to 22/100—a sentiment read that, while still cautious, signals improving conditions for growth and fundraising. Join us over the next few weeks as Startup Summer continues, and raise your hand on the show to workshop your next big idea with the community.