Comment by donnfelker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by donnfelker | Hacker News Reader

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1. Learn to code (You're doing that now) 2. Write down ideas (10 a day) about businesses you can start with software (thank you James Altucher for that tip) 3. Once you have a solid idea (dont do your first one) start writing an MVP. Not sure what an MVP is? Listen to the Lean Startup book on Audible (or buy the real book if you like to read) 4. Build a MVP product and ship it. Get a couple customers. 5. Work hard. 6. Eventually get paid and not work for anyone, other than you and your customers.

You're 37 now, you definitely dont want to be in a cube farm with a bunch of other resentful folks who write code for a fortune 500 company. I'm sure you have some domain knowledge around something else. Perhaps you were a flooring installer prior to code. Maybe you were a plumber, who knows. Take that skill and think about what software could have helped you during those times. Look for competitors, evaluate the market and then once you find that idea in that proper niche market. Go for it.

Another book to listen to: Start Small, Stay Small

Good luck!

Ah, "MVP", a new term to add to my repertoire, haha. Your advice is very valuable sir, thank you.

I'm well aware of the concept of sitting down with a piece of paper and a pen and trying to come up with ideas for projects. Unfortunately I'm struggling with the right balance of "reading to learn" and "doing to learn". I know that doing things, implementing ideas, etc., is probably the most productive and beneficial thing I can do for myself, but I get into this "I most read about this and that" loop that is not efficient.

The little amount of time I've spent trying to come up with projects have been unsuccessful but only because I do not spend considerable amount of time brainstorming. Your advice on how to approach this is excellent. As I wrote in my updated YC profile, I think we need more music apps for Android, but real music apps, not toys, so this is something I should put my attention on.

To get past your problem of your not "brainstorming" succesful ideas, I suggest you watch these slides by the creator of the Business Model Canvas:

http://www.slideshare.net/Alex.Osterwalder/successful-entrep...

there are a ton of resources on Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner:

http://ecorner.stanford.edu/

and Steve Blank's blog:

http://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/

Steve Blank wrote a book called Four Steps to Epiphany which is really good and advocates his "Customer Development" strategy:

http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/upl...

You'll see a common theme on most of those sites, which is basically to listen to the customer, "get out of the building" and validate your idea early (thus, the MVP)

If you need some inspiration for brainstorming and protoyping, Stanford has some advice on their Design School site

http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/exed/dtbc/

and some material is available here:

http://dschool.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Bootc...

look up "pretotyping", and the book Pretotype IT, it will inspire you:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0QztbuDlKs_ZTk2M2RhZWItYzk3...

Great stuff, thanks!

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