Hey, Aron here.

Last week, we discussed how I disagree with the word wantrepreneur. The connotation that you’re inferior to real builders is insulting. This week I want to show you the data behind why I think this label is misleading and explore a few ideas on serving the dreamers.

From watching hundreds of thousands of validation sessions, here’s the number that made start thinking:

If you are in exploration mode, that describes ¾ of you reading this. Additionally:

• 77% of people make their decision (build or don’t) within 10 minutes. Most make the decision to move forward very fast.

• 50% express genuine intent to build, via a 1000-person survey we performed.

• Only 25.6% actually do move toward building.

But here's what's happening inside the wall of people that continue to explore:

• 31.5% rethink their idea after seeing the analysis.

• 15.6% pivot to something different entirely.

These people are taking in new information and updating their thought processes. They validated, but it didn’t produce a launch, yet.

Here's what I think is happening in the validation world:

Many people are using idea exploration the way others research vacations, real estate, collectibles. Stimulating, rewarding, low risk, and it’s the whole experience for them.

Instead of a wantrepreneur, perhaps we should call them an:

Ideapreneur

Someone who generates, explores, and tests ideas as a genuine intellectual practice. They do the full cognitive work of entrepreneurship without the same destination as builders. As we discussed in the previous article… it’s the entire journey for them.

We break down our user base into 5 behavioral categories, and these most closely match the ideapreneurs:

Explorer — 52.3%
Analyzer — 9.7%
Refiner — 4.4%

(the rest move toward building)

Here’s what I am getting at…

Think about other groups like amateur cooks, who obsess over cooking content and courses, who will never run a restaurant. Or car enthusiasts who will never own that high end sports car in their lifetime. In every case someone looked at that audience and built for the passion directly… NOT just for the real cooks and future car owners.

Nobody has done that for entrepreneurship.

Every tool, every course, every community assumes the end goal is a company. The whole industry serves the 20% who want to launch and ignores the 80% who came to think and experiment.

What would it look like if someone built for that type of person?

They don’t want a launch checklist or an AI cofounder. They want something designed from the ground up for the way Ideapreneurs behave. A place to explore ideas as deeply as you want, purely for the intellectual pleasure of it and to follow idea categories like you do markets. They want to come back with a new idea and be celebrated for it rather than questioned about why you didn't build the last one.

I don't have that platform built and I am not planning it. What I'm doing is thinking out loud with the people who would actually use it. It needs to be affordable and intellectually stimulating.

The startup world spent a decade or two building an onramp for starting companies. But nobody built the place where the other 80% can sit, and think, and feel completely at home doing it, without someone hovering at the exit handing them a business plan.

That place doesn’t exist yet, maybe it should. Maybe one of you will create it.

Get the conversation started by choosing one of these below:

Email me and let me know what I am missing on WHY or WHY NOT.

Aron Meystedt
Chief Data Nerd - ValidatorAI

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