Overcoming the “brilliant ideas trap”: Family Dinner with Steven Jiang

The path Northwestern alum Steven Jiang was warned to stay away from, turned out to be the opportunity that saved his startup.

Jiang is the co-founder of Overture, a company that uses artificial intelligence to enable children to compose music and build video games in partnership with schools. Jiang and his co-founder Aspen Buckingham were featured in Forbes’ 30 under 30 list in 2023, and Jiang is the world’s most followed clarinetist on social media with over 300,000 followers. Now with over fifty school partners and $400,000 raised, Jiang’s venture is evolving from his original plan to build a video game to encourage children to play music.

Jiang is a firm believer that shiny, interesting startup ideas often don’t end up profitable. It’s a successful business model that allows startups to stand the test of time.

“One of the biggest myths that people always think is, ‘before I jump into something to start, I need this crazy, brilliant idea,’” Jiang told Residents at The Garage’s Family Dinner on Tuesday. “Otherwise, why am I wasting time doing it?”

Jiang spent three years pursuing his original venture, co-founding Overture with Buckingham as a sophomore at Northwestern. 

“Long story short, the crazy good idea we had at the time just completely flopped,” Jiang said. “We had about 20 million impressions on social media. We had a waitlist. A couple hundred users wanted to wait for the launch. And by the moment we launched the product, we found out that nobody was really using it. The retention was not great.”

Rather than continuing to pursue the failing venture or give up completely, Jiang and Buckingham made a crucial decision.

The founders were faced with an offer to teach an in-person curriculum using their game. They had been warned that embracing in-person was perilous, unscaleable, and difficult to invest in. But taking this leap proved to be a solution that allowed them to redefine their company. 

Instead of building and perfecting an entirely new product, Jiang and Buckingham decided to take three days to create a paper-and-pencil prototype to share with their new in-person students. From there, the founders continued building and embraced the in-person market.

“The games we build that launched in the consumer app market turned out to be a gold mine in a different market, an early education childhood market, where we were testing those games in different community centers and nonprofits,” Jiang said.

Jiang’s advice to startup founders is to ignore the noise; compliments and praise are secondary to real signals. Number of paying customers, retention and usage of the product are the true indicators of a company’s success.  

One of the most significant decisions a founder has to make is whether to pursue a full-time position or not in addition to their startup. Jiang’s advice is to decide as early as possible.

“If you want to build, you have to decide today whether you want to go full-time or not. That will unlock new opportunities,” Jiang said.

Jiang cited Buridan's Donkey as a metaphor: if a hypothetical donkey is faced with two abundant piles of hay, it starves when it can’t choose which to eat. Jiang believes that one must commit to a full-time job or full-time startup work, but it’s best not to vacillate between the two.

Jiang has an ambitious vision for Overture’s future growth. The company is currently looking to hire teacher partners.

“We expect to expand over 200 locations, hopefully by the end of this year to launch nationwide,” Jiang said.

Jiang’s lesson to startup founders is that success doesn’t come from so-called “brilliant ideas.” Instead, developing a scalable and profitable business depends upon trial and error, luck and a willingness to pivot. 

“Once upon a time, we were building paper and pencil prototypes or making consumer apps. Today, we're running a marketplace model of educators,” Jiang said. “You just never know where life takes you.”