Being an entrepreneur involves a whirlwind of emotions, sometimes occurring rapidly: there’s frustration, inspiration, exhaustion, glee, satisfaction, anger, excitement, despair — just to mention a few. It’s a rollercoaster.

Success relies on the ability to handle these emotions and not allowing them to disrupt the steady mindset required to navigate the ups and downs. Yet, there is one emotion I always pay particular attention to every time it arises: surprise.

It was surprise that led me to establish my company, Jotform. In 2005, while working as a developer at a New York media company, I was creating custom web forms for editors who needed them promptly. After crafting yet another similar form, I did what any exhausted developer would — I searched for a tool to streamline the process.

That search yielded nothing, and there it was: surprise. Could it be that no such tool existed? It did not. And that’s when I realized I had a promising idea.

Eventually, I learned that surprise is more than a brief feeling. It’s a clue. It indicates that something has been neglected or a widely accepted assumption may, in fact, be incorrect. For entrepreneurs, these instances — if recognized — can be the starting point of something significant.

When surprise strikes

When something catches me off guard, I don’t dismiss it — I delve deeper. I’ve discovered that these unexpected moments often offer more insights than countless hours of brainstorming. Upon stumbling upon an idea, the next step is to develop a minimum viable product, or MVP, and get it to users as soon as possible.

Obviously, not every surprise will lead to a product — a lot of MVPs end up dead in the water, which is why I advise building them quickly. But the practice of noticing and reflecting on the unexpected builds a kind of mental radar, one that keeps you alert to opportunities others miss.

The same is also true for less pleasant surprises. I once had a Jotform customer — a well-known brand — ask me to send a salesperson to their office to learn more about our other products. I was completely caught off guard. Salespeople? We had no salespeople. Until that point, Jotform had been entirely self-service.

I was so stunned that I sent no one, and didn’t go myself, either. Surprise! We lost the client to a competitor, one that had a sales team. But that moment stayed with me and became the impetus to build Jotform Enterprise, which today is growing so quickly it will surpass our self-service version within a few years.

Surprises like these, pleasant or otherwise, are rarely random. They test assumptions and expose blind spots. And if you’re paying attention, they can reveal what should come next.

Systematizing surprise

You can’t plan for a surprise, obviously, but you can get better at spotting it. Over the years, I’ve learned to build what I think of as a “surprise radar:” a system that keeps me tuned in to the unexpected, even in the most ordinary moments.

The first step for me is to always stay curious, even — or perhaps especially — when doing routine tasks. It can be easy during these times to switch off your critical thinking brain. But those are often the best moments to notice inefficiencies or strange patterns. Why does this process take so long? Why do we always do it this way?

This way of thinking is what’s called a beginner’s mindset, and it can be tough to adopt if you are not a beginner in your field. Once we’ve gained enough knowledge in a given area, our brains forge shortcuts that, while timesaving, also reduce our capacity for surprise. It becomes easy to stop questioning how things are done.

One strategy to keep your brain from slipping into autopilot is to conduct a time audit, which can help you figure out where you’re sinking your precious time. There are plenty of different platforms for this, like Reclaim or Toggl, but what matters is that you can clearly understand what tasks are taking up too much of your day.

From there, search for automation or AI tools that can relieve the burden for you. If it’s been a few months since your last search, do it again — AI technology is evolving rapidly, and options that may not have existed just last week may well exist now.

If you’re still coming up short, consider this a potential opportunity. Someone will probably fill this void eventually. Why not you?

It’s also critical to get outside of your comfort zone. Read books and articles on topics seemingly unrelated to your job. Talk to people in different industries, with different expertise or whose ideas don’t align with your own.

Will this be uncomfortable? Sure. But that’s the point. Surprise exists at the edge of expectations, just outside of what you thought you knew. If you only stick to the familiar, you’ll rarely be surprised. And without surprise, innovation is unlikely. The more you train yourself to notice the unexpected, the more you’ll start seeing it not as a disruption, but as a guide.