Ask HN: I have time and energy but I don't find good ideas | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: I have time and energy but I don't find good ideas

6 pointsahs9 comments

I'm in a very good financial situation right now and I probably won't have to work for the next year or so.

However even though I get new startup ideas every day none seems good enough to actually start investing time and resources in it. Most of the time, it either seems like 1) I would need at least 2 more people (I don't know anyone in real life who is into startups enough to do it with me), or 2) initial funding is non-trivial (I can sustain myself but I don't have money to invest).

Is it a psychological issue, and does it mean I'm not motivated enough? Or is it actually hard to find ideas that can be made profitable by only 1 person + hard work?

Note : I live in France and my skillset is purely technical.

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Salut ahs!

You probably heard people saying that you should focus on a particular niche.

Look around you, what are the professions of your parents? of your friends? Interview them.

With your technical background you might see solutions in their world they didn't know would be possible.

What I would do is surf the web a lot (i.e.tech blogs, startup websites, directories, Digg, etc.) to get inspiration. I think it was Thomas Edison/Edward de Bono who said, "To get a good idea, get a lot of ideas first." Find an idea that resonates with you so much that you can't wait to get on it (you'll know; you'll feel like you have hyper-OCD). Then, mock up a landing page or slideware, present them to your target customer, and test their reaction. If positive, go for it. Good luck!

It might be, that you, simply aren't an "idea person".

You could ask for ideas (eg. here on HN). or you could join other people, who have (useful) ideas.

Either way, it might be helpful, if you provided some more info on what kind of work motivates you and what your technical skills are.

I am self-taught, and I mainly use ruby. I also do all the font-end stuff well but I am not a designer.

Unfortunately I do not think that I have very strong areas CS wise, although I tend to pick up things quickly - last job I did was aggregating data from multiple types of databases, dealing with varying latencies, and presenting the results in an interface that made sense. Before that I was making a small bot for a flash game and I learned about things like minimax, alpha beta pruning, etc. Learning is a very strong source of motivation for me.

I guess this reply is also a good place to put down some of the ideas I've had lately.

- Improve workplace conditions by aggregating work experience and satisfation levels from employees; extract low-hanging fruits from the data. Use scale to improve results quality. Use that same data to advise job seekers as to which company would be good for them. Use game mechanics to get employees to contribute, and also game mechanics to get employers to implement the advice given by the system.

- Make a game distribution platform that takes a lot less money from the developers (last time I checked the margins were around 30%). They would hopefully all fly there.

- Location-aware shopping site. Many people around here regularly check nearby small clothing stores for fresh stuff. The app would be a minimalist display of the latest arrivals in their neighborhoods (google maps integration etc etc).

You should add your email to your profile. I would like to get in touch with you

I just added it.

Where aer you in France? You should look into weekend startups

Check out co founders wishlist, you might see someone that has ides looking for a techie. https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AgCvDTyBjHdOdDFfMEN...

On a secondary note, do you have a link to something you have done that shows your ability?

Here are my public github repos : http://github.com/pangel

The only programming I have done professionally so far are a couple of projects for the UCLA Library (while I was there), which you can see on github, and 10 or so freelance websites (for small businesses, an architect, and a magazine).

I should work on actually shipping more small useful side-projects, if only for myself. For now I just keep learning through toy, purposeless projects.

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