I was one of those people who had endless lists of business ideas, but struggled with analysis paralysis. It was difficult to know whether an idea was good enough to invest resources in before starting.

Throughout 2020, I was wrapping up my MBA at NYU Stern and received a fellowship from NYU’s Innovation Labs to work on new startup ideas. This led me on an academic journey to study the frameworks that make startup ideas successful.

It’s like mental models for startups. Some of the frameworks are well known. Others were developed through my own primary research and include case studies you won’t find from searching the web. Favorite frameworks include:

The Export Framework: How to find proprietary tools used within the businesses that developed them in order to pursue a broader market.

The Luxury to Commodity Framework: How to make expensive things cheaper and more available.

The Second Order Effects Framework: How to identify an event and extrapolate new business opportunities that are several steps ahead of the present.

Each lesson includes a framework + case study + exercise to help you apply that framework to come up with relevant ideas yourself. Case studies range from well known companies like Peloton to lesser known ones like Alto, AirGarage, and Jamf. Not every case is tech focused. One of my favorite case studies covers how Chobani went from unknown startup to the #2 yogurt maker in the world using one of the lesser known frameworks in the course.

To build this, I leveraged Arist’s (YC S20) platform to create an engaging course delivered via daily text messages or WhatsApp. It’s a really interesting approach to creating engaging learning curriculums.

Each day, you receive a text with a new framework + case study + exercise. Why text? Because the open rates are way better than email. This way you WILL learn and not give up. So if you are actually trying to learn and remember the material, this is an effective format to do so.