Startup Idea Generation

sproutly.com

4 points·rockstar9··5 comments

"Thinking of an idea is the first step and also the one of the hardest parts of a startup."

If you are isolated, maybe. But not if you are already among your customers. They have so many ideas, I can't keep up. And I come up with many more watching them struggle. They're the ones stuck with crappy software, trying to get stuff done every day. They always tell me, "If I only had this, then I could do that..."

Because I'm already so close to my customers, my problem isn't coming up with ideas; it's deciding which ones to run with.

Got technical skills but having trouble coming up with ideas? Get away from your terminal and out into the field. Problem solved.

True, but you need to do a bit of filtering: clients tend to go on flights of fancy for things they say they want but would never pay for if you actually produced it for them.

Granted - but the important point edw519 is getting at, I'd say, is that getting close to clients is a way of reducing the problem from thinking of an idea de novo to filtering out the good ones. I'd count that as a major win.

Unfortunately, some of us don't have that luxury. In my current gig, I'm insulated from actual customers by a substantial distance and half a mile of extremely cautious beaurocracy. This is not conducive to customer sensitivity, to put it mildly.

"In my current gig, I'm insulated from actual customers..."

Probably one of the many reasons this board is so popular. Hang in there.

Of course. After a while you get pretty good at filtering. And sometimes they come up with something a lot of others would pay for.

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