The idea maze

There are times when reasoning by analogy isn't optimal. Elon Musk famously preferred going through "first principles" and I find this likely leads to a better more innovative end product.

Take payments (my industry) for example. There are countless startups that are working on something that enhances or optimizes whatever pre-existing solution we have today. That's thinking by analogy. It's faster and easier but you're constrained by the limits of whatever you're comparing to.

Then there's thinking from first principles. From scratch. Take what Dwolla is trying to build for example. "If we were to build the Visa or Mastercard network today, what would it look like?"

A lot of the new innovative systems in payments, like Bitcoins, started by thinking of first principles rather than analogy.

I like to think of startups as research projects. You start with a hypothesis, which is usually "there is sufficient market for <idea>". Then you do the experiments to prove the hypothesis, which is the actual startup. How you go about proving the hypothesis is just as important as the hypothesis you start with. In the world of science, if your experiments have flaws they won't be accepted as proof of your hypothesis. In the startup world, flaws don't necessarily discredit the hypothesis, but then fail to prove it when you go bust.

I have always described the process of finding product-market fit as an "elucidation" of sorts, so I use the Legend of Zelda maps as my analogy instead of a maze.

For those (unfortunate few) who aren't familiar, the Zelda level maps would be separated into separate blocks or "screens" that presented a unique stage of gameplay. After visiting a screen, that particular segment would become visible on your map.

I prefer this analogy because it encourages looking at the entire map (3rd person) instead of thinking only of your current position in the "maze/level" (1st person).

Chris naturally made this abstraction when considering how to "map out the idea maze", but I think it's an important distinction.

I think the most efficient manner of elucidating squares on your map is by engaging customers. Engaging them with a prototype is a phenomenal exercise, but requires more time and resources then just engaging them with a questionnaire over coffee or via an online survey. The manner in which we most efficiently uncover these "maps" is substantial enough for its own essay. Chris touched on a few of them but I think they are varied and infinitely complex.

This is the wrong/dangerous way about thinking about startups. The right way is the Elon Musk - first principle way.

There is really no point figuring out the maze - it won't help you in your startup. Even the best founders get the big breaks very very rarely - and often it is a result of the founders personal motivations/vision articulating in a product for which the world is ready (for no mistake/contributions of the founders). History is littered with the best founders who wasted years pursing an idea whose time hasn't come or were not able to reach scale due to some quirk of the markets. (Steve Jobs, Larry Page - Google Plus )

The best and the only strategy for founders is to think by first principles - with a healthy disdain for all rules that mankind has found till now. This will not guarantee that you will not waste years of your life - that is an occupational hazard and "to stare into the abyss and chew glass" comes with the territory - but as a strategy this is your best shot.

Seems like a similar idea to seeing the future because you're living in it - domain knowledge and connections are a powerful thing; the 'Self' part of PG's essay on startup ideas (http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html) is about this, albeit from a different angle.

An early mentor of mine stressed the importance of judgment, and pattern recognition. I think that's the point here. In the end, despite all the data you still have to have the right intuition. It can come from intelligence, and it can come from experience. Usually it's good intelligence applied to bad experiences.

This is awesome advice. All of the popular company-starting frameworks out there right now are popularizations of the age-old idea of de-risking. Shed risk as quickly and cheaply as you can; if you are going to fail, fail fast. But the one thing both Blank and Ries seem to gloss over is that the cheapest way to de-risk is to do it before you have a MVP, before you start doing customer discovery. Do it by knowing the industry and market and customer you're targeting. 50% of this can often be done in a few days of reading stuff you've searched on the Web. And an additional 30% of it can be done by talking to knowledgable people and asking them what they think of your idea. (The other 20% you have to learn the hard way, by doing.)

We have seen that the premium on ideas is going down - it is all boiling down to execution slowly. Our experience with Firespotting has shown that people are increasingly sharing good quality ideas.

> The benefits of learning about the maze generally far outweigh the risks of having your idea stolen.

Any evidence for that? Stealth mode seems to work pretty well in big companies

Good article except for the stealth mode advice.

The best answer to "What's your secret sauce?" - domain experience...

Just that phrase is the best thing about the startup engineering course.

awesome post!!!