Why most great ideas never leave the notes app

"Overthinking kills more dreams than failure ever will."

Richard recently shared this reflection on his famous mantra, "Screw it, let's do it" on LinkedIn - and it really struck a chord.

It's a simple idea, but after more than a decade supporting founders through Virgin StartUp, I've seen it play out time and time again.

The idea that sits quietly in a notebook, a notes app, or the back of someone's mind. It might be a business they want to start, a book they want to write, a podcast, a community project - or a completely different ambition altogether.

I often wonder how many brilliant ideas never get the chance to come to life.

Not because they're bad ideas. Not because the people behind them lack talent. But because they're waiting.

Waiting until they have more confidence. More experience. More money. More certainty.

The trouble is, that perfect moment rarely arrives.

The founders who succeed aren't always the most qualified or experienced. More often than not, they're simply the ones who start.

Start with curiosity 

Take Dominika and Elsie, the founders of BYBI.

They didn't set out to build an internationally recognised skincare brand, they started with a blog.

The pair shared a fascination with clean beauty and wanted to better understand what went into products. They began experimenting with recipes in their kitchens, documenting their discoveries online and building a community around their content.

Over time, people wanted more.

What started as curiosity became a business. That business became a brand. And that brand eventually grew internationally before the founders successfully exited.

The business we know today wasn’t there from the beginning.

There was simply an interest, a willingness to learn, and a decision to start.

Start with a question 

I've seen the same pattern in the story of Change Please founder, Cemal Ezel.

While travelling through South-East Asia, Cemal found himself talking to a stranger on a bus in Vietnam. The stranger asked him a question:

"When you're old, sitting in your rocking chair looking back on your life, what would you like to say you've achieved?"

The question stayed with him.

Months later, after returning to London, he walked past a rough sleeper sitting beneath a Banksy artwork that read: "Keep your coins, I want change."

For many people, it would have been a passing moment, but for Cemal, it became the start of an idea.

Today, Change Please operates across multiple countries, supplies coffee to major organisations, and has helped hundreds of people experiencing homelessness access employment, housing and support.

But none of that existed when the idea first appeared.

It started with a conversation, an observation, and a willingness to act.

 
Start before you're ready 

Then there's Selma Nicholls, founder of Looks Like Me.

When Selma's daughter began questioning her identity at just three years old, she realised reassurance at home wasn't enough.

Her daughter needed to see people who looked like her represented in advertising, film and popular culture. That deeply personal experience became the catalyst for something that would ultimately become much bigger.

Selma went on to launch Looks Like Me, an agency championing diverse talent on screen and in advertising. Since then, she has worked with some of the world's biggest brands and even saw her daughter cast in Beyoncé's Brown Skin Girl.

Again, the business didn't begin with a grand masterplan. It began with a problem that mattered deeply to someone who decided to do something about it.

Three very different founders.  
 
Three very different journeys.  
 
Yet all three stories have something in common: None of them began with certainty. They began with curiosity, a question, a frustration, an observation, a passion… and crucially, a willingness to take action.

 
We forget the messy middle 

That's why I think we sometimes misunderstand entrepreneurs.

We tend to look at successful businesses and assume their founders always knew where they were heading.

We see the finished product and forget the messy middle. The reality is usually far less polished.

Ideas evolve, products change, businesses pivot, new opportunities emerge. Sometimes the destination ends up looking completely different from where the journey began.

Virgin's own story is a reminder of that.

When Richard Branson launched Student magazine as a teenager, he wasn't trying to build a global brand. He wasn't working from a blueprint that would eventually lead to airlines, hotels, health clubs, banking or space travel. He simply started something he believed in.

In fact, one of the biggest lessons I've learned from working with founders over the last decade is that many of the things people are waiting for only arrive after they've started.

Confidence comes from doing.

Experience comes from doing.

Connections come from doing.

Even opportunities come from doing.

Once people know what you're building, unexpected things begin to happen. Customers appear, collaborators reach out, mentors offer advice. Doors open that couldn't have opened while the idea remained hidden away in a notes app.

Of course, this isn't an argument for recklessness - planning and preparation matter - but there is an important difference between preparing to start and endlessly postponing the start altogether.

So, if you're sitting on an idea of your own, maybe the question isn't:

"What if it fails?"

Maybe it's:

"What if it works?"

The perfect time doesn't exist - and that's actually good news.

It means you don't need to wait for it.

As Richard would say:

"Screw it, let's do it."

- written by Andy Fishburn, MD and founding member of Virgin StartUp

To learn more about Virgin StartUp and discover how we're helping founders turn ideas into businesses, visit Virgin StartUp.