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Comment by pg | Hacker News Reader

I may write an updated version, but not today. (It's Christmas.)

Here, let me help:

1. pg-bot technology for responding on holidays to posts about funding. The bot should have sufficient business sense for pointing young entrepreneurs in the right direction, but should also contain semantic sense for responding in a witty and lighthearted way... for example, in Haiku.

Until the updated version gets written, just a reminder that's been said several times and that PG reiterated at this year's Startup School: focus more on solving problems instead of ideas.

Perhaps I'm just not seeing the distinction, but can't they be the same thing? You can use an "idea" to solve a "problem". An idea (whether self generated, or off a list from pg's head) could be rooted in a real-world problem.

most of the ideas that you start with actually change later. So, not a good idea to fit problems to an idea, they would almost never perfectly match.

eg problem = persistent storage

idea 1 = reel to reel tape

idea 2 = self contained cassettes

idea 3 = hard disks

idea 4 = floppy disks

idea 5 = flash based drives

If you concentrate on the problem (we build the most reliable/fastest/cheapest devices for persistent storage) instead of the idea (we build the most reliable/fastest/cheapest tape drives) then you're less likely to be screwed when the market or technology changes

Unless your problem is "we solve epicycles" - neither is going to insulate you from obsolescence.

The benefit to targeting a "problem" is that you have a preexisting need. An "idea" with no existing "problem" may require several years of extra lead-in where you are struggling to get people to understand what you do and why it should matter to them. It can work, but the ratios are less favorable for a VC-style investment which looks for fast turnaround with minimal risk and orders-of-magnitude payoff.

Slightly unrelated, but here's a question i've been searching to answer. When I worked in the IT department of a non tech company, I saw tech-solvable problems everywhere. Today I work for a deeply technical engineering company. I Engineer for Engineers. I'm very serious about starting a company, however it's becoming increasingly harder for me to see problems I can solve that aren't consumer oriented. I think consulting is the best way to get into a non tech company to find problems... but I'm not sure how to get in.

You got a valid point. A a trick could be to focus on a problem, encounter many ideas (especially from other fields), and see if you could apply that idea to solve that problem. A problem that's hard for a technical person to solve could be trivial to someone who looks at it from a psychological point of view, and vice versa.

But the key is to always have a set of problems floating in your head. Having an idea, and seeing what problems that idea can solve is not as effective, as you often end up trying to force a square into a hole.

Merry Christmas and happy New Year.

Right now is the perfect time for people like me to see a list like that (plenty of free time to contemplate this week).

It's also a great time to be away from our LCDs and together with family :]

Get an iPad, then you can bring the computer into the living room.

Exactly. So we get our present on time :)

Merry Christmas pg.

It will be your Christmas gift :-)

Surely this dilemma can be remedied with a line or two of Lisp ;)

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