The reason your new venture has merit is the also the reason it’s difficult to  build, and what makes the entrepreneur’s task so challenging. The more differentiated a business opportunity is compared with the status quo, the more it is undefined. While some may see undefined as an 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, others may respond positively to valid proof points and at the same time remain skeptical about whether your product or service is just different 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, if you remember from my story, 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.

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