“I’m just not a creative person.”
I’ve lost count of the number of People and founders who’ve said this to me. It’s usually the first sentence out of their mouth during our initial meeting, right after they’ve pitched me an idea they’ve been working on for months.
They say it as if creativity is some magical, pre-ordained trait—something you either win in the genetic lottery or don’t.
But based on my experience as a CA and someone who has worked with dozens of startups, I can tell you that this belief is completely wrong. The most successful founders I’ve advised aren’t necessarily the ones who can paint a masterpiece or write a symphony. They are the ones who have mastered a specific skill: the art of seeing the world not as it is, but as it could be.
I was recently advising a brilliant founder. He had a stellar team, a large seed round, and a product that was technically impressive. A year later, the startup was dead. He had spent all his time perfecting the technology and had not once validated that the problem he was solving was one that people would actually pay for. He built a beautiful solution to a non-existent problem.
Creativity isn’t a gift. It’s a muscle. And like any muscle, it needs a proper workout. Let me show you what that workout looks like.
Ebunking the “Eureka!” Myth
There’s a dangerous romanticism around the “Eureka!” moment. We love the image of the genius who has a sudden, brilliant revelation.
But creativity is not magic. It’s a process, and in startups, it is painfully pragmatic. It’s a repeatable system for identifying cracks in the world and turning them into opportunities.
The founders who consistently create value—the ones building products that actually matter—don’t rely on luck. They build systems for generating and testing ideas. One founder I know from the SaaS space has a rule: for every feature idea, he forces himself to write five reasons why it will fail. It is a discipline, not a flash of inspiration.
The 5-Stage Creative Process (That No One Sees)
Every creative breakthrough you’ve ever seen—the design of the iPhone, the business model of Zomato, the simplicity of Zerodha—it all follows the same five stages. They are not glamorous, but they are reliable.
1. Preparation: Obsess Over the Problem, Not the Solution
You can’t create something from nothing. Before you can have a great idea, you need to become an expert on the problem. This doesn’t mean reading a few articles. It means obsessing over the smallest details.
An entrepreneur I advise in the logistics space realized his “problem” of slow delivery times was, in fact, a symptom of a much more boring problem: how drivers plan their routes with multiple delivery apps open on their phones. He spent three weeks riding shotgun with drivers, not to solve the problem, but to understand it.
Lesson: If you want to build Zomato, you don’t just think about an app. You go and stand in restaurant queues. You watch people. You feel their frustration. The boring preparation is the bedrock of a breakthrough.
2. Incubation: The Shower is Your Best Office
After you’ve stuffed your brain with information, you must let it marinate. You cannot force the process. You have to step away.
I always tell founders to go for a walk, take a shower, or do something that doesn’t require intense focus. This is not slacking off—it’s strategic. Your subconscious mind is a powerful processing engine, and it needs space to work.
My best investment advice has come to me not while staring at spreadsheets, but while lost in thought during a morning walk.
Lesson: If you’re stuck, don’t brute force it. Walk away. Let the dots connect themselves.
3. Insight: Recognize the “Aha!” Moment
This is the stage everyone romanticizes. The sudden flash of clarity.
But remember, it is the payoff for the preparation and incubation that came before.
For example, Naveen Tewari’s “Aha!” moment at InMobi wasn’t a random epiphany. It was the culmination of years spent in the ad-tech trenches. He could see the global opportunity because he had earned the right to see it through his prior work.
Lesson: Insight is not a lightning bolt from a clear sky. It’s the result of hours of boring, unseen work.
4. Evaluation: Be Brutally Honest
This is where good ideas survive and bad ideas are mercifully killed.
Founders fall in love with their ideas and ignore the most critical question: “Does this idea make sense for a business, or does it just make sense to me?”
A founder once pitched me a “revolutionary” new CRM software. It had amazing features. But when I asked them who their first customer would be and how much they would pay, they had no answer. They had no evaluation plan.
Lesson: Test your idea with a stranger, not your mother. If you can’t articulate a single, clear reason why someone would pay for it, you don’t have an idea yet.
5. Elaboration: Make the Boring Happen
This is the least glamorous part, but it is the most important. This is where you roll up your sleeves and do the hard work of building a prototype, getting feedback, and iterating.
This is where most startups fail. They have a great insight but lack the discipline to execute. They don’t talk to enough customers. They don’t iterate quickly enough.
Lesson: The real innovation happens in the execution. It’s not about the lightbulb moment; it’s about the wiring behind the wall.
Why Most Founders Fail at Creativity
Most founders are decent at linear thinking—following a plan, executing a playbook. But they fail at lateral thinking—questioning the playbook itself.
They see competitors doing X, so they do X. They see a “market standard,” so they follow it. This is a trap.
Zerodha is the classic Indian example. Everyone in the Indian stockbroking industry was doing the same thing: charging high commissions, opening physical branches. The “playbook” was set. Then Zerodha came along and asked, “What if we do this differently? What if we don’t charge commissions?”
That’s lateral thinking. It completely redefined the industry and created immense value.
Lesson: Don’t just follow the steps. Question them.
Final Thought
The most successful founders I’ve worked with aren’t waiting for a lightning bolt of inspiration. They are building the weather system that makes those lightning bolts strike.
CA Roshan Jha
Founder, Startup Solutions 247
Chartered Accountant | Big4 Experience | Startup Advisor