How to get startup ideas

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Best startup ideas commons:

• founders want themselves
• founders can build
• few other realize it is worth doing

Live in the future and build what seems interesting. Strange as it sounds, that’s the real recipe.

Problem

• Work on problems which exists

• Bad ideas may sound plausible

• If the feedback from target audience is not negative it doesn’t mean idea is bad

• When startup launches there should be users who wants the product urgently

• Tradeoff: big audience but average interest vs small audience with high interest

  • choose latter

• It is hard to see how the small niche idea will become big

How to get ideas

• live on the edge of the field does not only mean to push it forward but you might be a user
  • “Live in the future, then build what’s missing”
  • “Live in the future and build what seems interesting”
• not think up but notice
• turn on whats missing and turn off “could this be big?”
• pay attention to thing that annoy you
• loose mind and pay attention to gaps and anomalies
• build thing that are cool because it is not interesting to build something already existing

Studying

• it is easier to spot problems in unrelated fields
• beware of research, because research problems are far aways from real users problems

Competition

• worrying that you are too late is a sign of a good idea
• focus on users not competitors
• it is promising if you are entering the crowded market where everybody is missing something you know
• strategy
  • huge market but with secret sauce
  • small market which could be extended

Filters

• turn off schlep filter
  • when something seems difficult, messy and hard to work with
  • many people fear to deal with those problems (e.g. Stripe and payment processing)
• turn off unsexy filter
  • these are problems you don’t like, not interested

Recipes

Coming up with ideas on demand

• come up with idea that you really need
• “would you use that thing if you hadn’t written it?”
• “Why doesn’t someone make x? If someone made x we’d buy it in a second.”
• try to sell bad idea and collect feedback
• talk to everybody about gaps in the world to find others unmet needs
  • what is tedious or annoying?
• if found someone else’ issue try to solve problems for exactly that person
• bypass schelp and unsexy filters
  • seek out ideas that are unsexy or involve schleps
  • “what you wish someone else would build, so that you could use it. What would you pay for right now?”
• startup garbage-collecting broken companies and industries
  • try to imaging how to profit from that, try to ask that as if you were in the future
• small niches is fine because big players don’t pay attention to it