I tend to think really, really different. I don't get excited about streaming this, cloud that, or app mania. I want to invent a radically different future for sports and fitness. The closest category that currently exists is called "exergaming" but that only touches on what I want to do, and may give people the wrong idea about my much more serious product. Will this hurt or help my chances when approaching VC's, partners, and customers?
I understand that creating a new market is expensive and that incremental invention is easier for people to understand and accept. But someone has to raise the bar, right? A totally new market will have no competition (for a while) and thus a nice moat to protect the investment. So which is better?
My problem is that my customers (let's just narrow it to gym owners for now) don't know if it will work because all they know is what their customers (gym users) prefer TODAY. They have no idea how gym users will react to something that no one has ever tried. So I need to complete the prototype before I can prove that people will LOVE it. But to do that, I will need some funding, and thus I must convince VC's who may not like my inability to get the gym owners on board. Do you see my catch 22?