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Comment by davismwfl | Hacker News Reader

It is interesting, when I was young I felt like I had no ideas at times. The reality was I just wasn't recognizing all the opportunities ripe for solutions. Pick things in your lives that you are frustrated and passionate about, otherwise a startup is doomed to fail. I say that because passion is the only thing that will sustain you when life is sucking as it will occasionally in a startup.

At the same time, maybe this is a point you should get an internship or job to gain the experience to know what might be of interest. I personally never recommend that a college student go looking to start a company unless they already have a really deep passion for an issue and it is marketable. Otherwise, in my experience and opinion, your failure rate will be way higher, almost a guarantee.

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James Altucher (or/and his wife) recommend coming up with 10 ideas a day to train your creative muscle. I have found this technique to be very valuable in times of creative drought.

10 is square man. Why not fractional ideas?

Come up with π ideas a day?

Thanks for reply. We are all interning this summer, but have a lot of free time. Since we have experience with a startup. We realized that it's not just building the tech, but doing the selling, acquiring users etc.

Now that we know this, we are struggling to find an idea that we can build, but also have time to grow during the school year as well.

Cool.. My bet if you look around you'll find a bunch of ideas. Talk to friends, strangers etc and just ask what's frustrating them etc.

Since you are interning go and talk to the sales, marketing and business dev teams and ask them questions. As an intern you have the freedom to ask all kinds of questions and no one will really think twice. Just try to get away from the development group when you are asking a lot of the questions because they typically aren't seeing the opportunities only the items presented to them, and many times their presence will keep sales teams from speaking freely.

We have been keeping a note book, asking people for problems they face, and looking at problems we face. We just don't like any problems that we have discovered. The best idea so far is creating some sort of AngelList for the LP space or a version of Seeking Alpha for the private equity/venture capital community. Nothing worthwhile yet.

Great, keeping the notebook is awesome.

Your smart to not just jump on an idea, if you don't like it or don't feel totally energized by it then it isn't a good fit for you. Doesn't mean someone can't do it and be successful, but you likely wouldn't if you aren't totally engaged and super energized.

Keep it up and Good luck!

Can't find a seat at the bar? Hate doing laundry? Trouble finding a gift for someone? Have an hour free and wish you could sell that time for very-short-term work? Keep a journal of problems/obstacles you encounter every day.

Create/brainstorm solutions to all of these problems you encounter. And work through a realistic way to implement the solutions.

Some of these ideas/solutions will be terrible. Most won't make sense as a business, or won't have a market, or will be beyond what you think you're capable of. But something should stick. MVP it, and then iterate.

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