A summary of my learnings on how to find startup ideas
liorn.substack.com
liorn.substack.com
I think the best strategy is to just pick an area you know you generally enjoy working in, and start building a copy of something that already exists in that space. As you go along you will inevitably run into the same problems that others previously faced, and at some point you're going to find some fork in the road where everyone went one way but you think it's worth trying the other, or you will find some problem that everyone in the space has been dealing with that you could fix. Unlike high level ideation, in this scenario when you find an idea it will be something that you are already an expert on and passionate about solving, and the value of such a solution would be immediately clear.
[0] https://danielfonsecayarochewsky.medium.com/can-we-stop-the-...
Though I agree that all ideas come from somewhere, some of the best ideas come from places completely tangential to the final outcome.
Examples:
- Richard Feynman's diagrams (which won him a Nobel Prize) came from watching students 'piddle around with plates in the cafeteria; (his words).
- The invention of Teflon was invented by Roy Plunkett whilst he was trying to develop a new kind of refrigerant.
- The invention of the cloud chamber (actually to synthesize clouds, but only by accident discovered to be good at tracking particles).
To quote Einstein: “This combinatory or associative play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought”
The fact is that this process of accidental discovery can be developed, trained and taught (I teach creativity to art students). It can also be instituted within an organization (e.g. Xerox PARC and Lockheed Martin's Skunk Works). Its main ingredient is a mental one, a hyperfunction of one's associative apparatus. Key to getting it to work is a lack of premature judgment at the early stages of the creative process.
1. Ensure you always have to hand a means to record ideas. For a visual artist, this can be drawing in a sketchbook, but can equally be lists of things in a note to self via SMS or anything. Both ‘Yesterday’ (Paul McCartney and the Beatles) and ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’ (Keith Richards and The Rolling Stones) were written by their authors in their dreams. The reason the authors did not forget them when they woke up was because they both slept with guitars by their bed.
2. Related to the preceding, know that the best ideas come when you are not looking for them. This is not hokey wisdom, this phenomenon has been subject to serious analysis. Many creative folk recognize that their best ideas come when they are running, walking, cooking, falling asleep, sitting in a cab etc. Mine come when I go for long walks and I make sure to have my voice memo app handy when I do. For some, alcohol or drugs serves the same purpose :). But be carful. I know artists whose works resemble each other's because they all use the same drug.
3. Take advantage of accidents, they are dancing lessons from god (Vonnegut). When writing lyrics for his songs, David Bowie (1947–2016) would write words on individual sheets of paper which he would throw in the air. The lyrics would evolve from the chance association of words with each other as they landed on the ground. Leonardo Da Vinci got some of his ideas from looking at stains in plaster or clouds.
4. See something you like? Steal it! Make it your own! Look at how Manet's Olympia 'borrowed' from Titian and his Venus of Urbino. What he stole was the form, not (exactly) the content. This relates to something very significant: that it is almost impossible to invent in a vacuum. One could as easily steal pictorial form from adverts, movies... anything.
5. Putting in the hours helps more than in commonly recognized. Before The Beatles went to Germany, they were an entirely average band, typical of the time. When they came back, they were the Beatles. The difference? The gigged live for three evenings a week.
6. Look for patterns in your own work. The thing that drives your own creative profile is unique to you. It is already there... waiting to be seen. It is this that will direct you to choose one idea over another. Doubt me? Look at any artist's biography. See how evidence of their 'final form' is apparent even in their student work.
Two cool references: - Johnson. S., 2010, Where Good Ideas Come From, Penguin UK. - Currey, M. 2013, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Knopf.
In a nutshell, take any process at all. Maybe something you do a lot. Or something you have some vested interest in. Or something that you aspire to learn. Really break it out into its nitty gritty step by step details. Now mull over where you see steps that can be removed or combined. That's what most of the time people get really excited about. E.g. "They used to have to do these 7 things to order a cab, and now its just these 3 things"
Concept is described really well in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Something-Really-New-Creating-Innovat...
You may not exactly remove a step, but simply adapt it - e.g. self-checkout.
I'm sure there must be some examples where an innovation added steps - e.g. the takeoff checklist for pilots.
It's particularly maddening if the rest of the sentence is "put that information online" or "shared those updates somewhere", because the solution is dirt cheap to build. Hunting information is an expensive waste of time.
The flip side is that sometimes, things are done a certain way for a reason that's not immediately obvious.
I guess that if you came up with some completely novel idea, say facetiously, some cyrpto-subscription knock-off of flappy bird where you play against others. I can almost guarantee that if it showed any kind of traction, somebody out there would copy it either directly, or similarly enough. Then, if they get the execution down better than you, that's their start-up company taking off.
It's the whole red ocean/blue ocean analogy - there's more good ideas out there already, badly executed, that are just waiting for you to pick up and do better.
Find whatever huge entity with lots of cash is throwing that cash around and figure out how to make something that the cash will stick to.
Over the years it has been Autodesk, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Softbank, etc.
YC or any successful VC doesn't fund ideas. There is something else the founders have figured out which is key to success and funding. This could be a distribution trick, a key insight, a user growth metric.
Its not hard to imagine YC or a VC coming across the same idea pitched by different founders. Why they picked the team they picked cannot be obvious from trawling the startup directory, that insight is hidden, its literally a secret that should be guarded
Over time you will find yourself dredging up all kinds of ideas without meaning to (while doing other things) and before you know it you will have a long list that can then be prioritized and explored
My dream would be to start a so-called "micro-startup" selling B2B software for $10+K/month in revenue.
I have the technical skills and, even though I'm rather far removed from the business unit of my company, I have some decent ideas (I think…).
How do I figure out if HR/recruiting would want/need my idea(s)?
[1] I spend my free time archiving Laserdiscs and writing software for improved NTSC post-processing.
My best advice is to try to make the sale, even before you have something ready. You'll learn what parts of your pitch are connecting with them, and which are confusing to them.
But more importantly, you're going to understand if you get the problem as well as you think you do. And you're going to understand if they like your solution to that problem as much as you hope they do.
So, email a few of these potential customers. See if they'll take a call with you. If none do, you're not there yet. But if even one does, you're about to get a ton of information in 30 minutes. Good luck!
The mistake we made was that we didn’t understand our target users well enough. I realized that we needed to spend a lot more time as “journalists” and “anthropologists” working to understand a certain group of people and their problems than as software developers building solutions.
As I’m trying to find startup ideas these days, I find myself asking, “Which groups of users and which communities do I actually care about?” For me at least, that seems to be the engine that will sustain me over years of trying to build a company.
I think the regulatory changes area is quite under-explored.
In the end though, a clear visualization of the customer is key —- how can you actually find the person that will buy your product?
I think regulatory opportunity is often under-appreciated. Very subtle, boring things can move a business model or technology from impossible to insanely valuable.
I found this to be very productive, especially when I'm able to speak to senior managers who know exactly what the problem is; what is holding their performance at a lower level.
Their reaction is always pragmatic saying what they need and, believe me, at what cost.
We also need a stateful GUI markup standard/browser/pluggin to reduce reinventing GUI engines via JavaScript + DOM. (Best to open source it, but charge for logo usage, certification, etc. Your site would be the de-facto reference documentation, and you can put ads on it.)