The reason many business opportunities have merit is also what makes entrepreneurism difficult. The more differentiated a business opportunity is from the status quo, the more it is undefined. While some may see undefined as the opportunity, others will interpret undefined as “there is no evidence that a market exists” or “if this is such a good idea, why hasn’t it been done before?” On the other hand, if your business is like other existing businesses, you may be met with the positive response that there are valid proof points at the same time you are met with skepticism that it is different enough to be viable.

While differentiation bodes well for the success of a business, it also by definition means that the business is unproven. Some of the most novel concepts—Starbucks, Amazon, Uber—were the most difficult to develop. At their inception, many of these brand new industries were considered not much more than technological voodoo or witchcraft. Even our business—rewards for healthy behavior—was non-existent in the mid 2000s. Every industry other than healthcare—airlines, credit cards, banks, hotels, retailers—rewarded consumers for the behaviors that they wanted to drive. In fact, healthcare was perhaps the only industry trying to drive consumer behavior that didn’t use rewards. At the time, customers in the health industry said, “we are never going to pay people to do the things that they should be doing to be healthy.” Today, rewards in healthcare are everywhere and whenever there is an effort to drive behavior in healthcare, rewards are always a part of the solution. Differentiation is a necessity but it also comes with the reality of charting a new frontier.

Think of all the novel concepts that would not exist today had the entrepreneurs behind them been deterred by this reality and decided not to plow ahead. Can you imagine:

• Buying all of your books in a bookstore?
• Renting all of your movies from a store?
• Waiting for a yellow cab for a ride?
• Buying coffee from your local store?

You will walk into two investor meetings an hour apart. One investor will say “your concept is not different enough from what is out there.” An hour later, another investor will say, “your concept is too different from what the market has seen and there is no proof it will work.” This is the nature of the beast. One of the hardest things to do is to strike the balance between sticking to a firm plan for your business and adjusting as you get feedback. You must understand why your solution is or is not different enough—not just that it is or is not different enough. Is it the market you are going after? Is it the business model? Is it your pricing model? While it is always important to listen to feedback from customers, investors and others, expect conflicting responses and don’t let them sway you from your goal. Get used to being damned if you do and damned if you don’t. No one said entrepreneurism is fair.

Plenty of people have said, however, that there are no new solutions out there. With so many entrepreneurs, so much capital and so much new technology, it is almost impossible to do something that stands out. Yet, on a daily basis we are amazed by another new business springing to life and we say to ourselves, “why didn’t I think of that?” Remember, if you are doing something different, you are going to have to deal with the fact that it has not been done before.