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Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

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Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#321

Post by Frondo »

Qwertious wrote: post #190
ChuckMcM wrote: post #170

My simple advice is to stop looking for ideas and to start looking for problems. Look for the pain, and to do that talk to people. The challenge will be that most people accommodate the pain in order to get something done, but they don't like it. A recent pain point I came across was that 501.c(3) organizations are good at organizing but often poor at "the Internet". That suggested that if you talked to a half dozen…

>My simple advice is to stop looking for ideas and to start looking for problems. I concur, and add that HN could really help OP by complaining about random stuff here. Just complain about the first thing that comes to mind that's been bugging you, OP will really appreciate it!

Here's mine: fix income inequality and the staggering inequality in the distribution of wealth worldwide.

How is that a startup? I dunno, maybe there's a small part of that big problem that you can start tackling. Maybe it has to do with some facet of the economy you're improving/making more efficient, maybe it has to do with influencing policy. That's for you to figure out.

Find a big, big problem, and then look for a manageable chunk that your team can execute an idea on. You're in this for the long haul, right?

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#322

Post by alexanderstears »

IF you guys activate on this idea - let me know. I'll work for no salary (but equity) and I have an extremely strong vision of how this should be -

build an augmented reality app to help people with basic car repairs - start out with small jobs like replacing lights and air filters and move into more complex tasks and gear for technicians. Eventually you can expand out into a wider variety of machines.

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#323

Post by adventured »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #186
mindcrime wrote: post #19

The few product ideas we came up with following the above process we dropped, often because we discovered that that space is ultra crowded or commooditized. GoDaddy founder Bob Parsons once said something like (paraphrased slightly) "never be scared to enter a crowded market. Just be better than everybody else". Something to think about. Beyond that, consider that your product is not the only dimension on which you c…

Mark Cuban once said (something like) "If you're looking where everyone else is looking then you're looking in the wrong place." I think that trumps Parsons. That said, looking at ideas that "didn't work" can be a solid approach. That is, sometimes (for example) the idea was solid but the team failed. The market also changes and some ideas can be ahead of their time (and poorly executed).

To be fair to Parsons, he built a dramatically more successful and larger business than Cuban ever has. Parsons is also a billionaire and worth nearly as much as Cuban.

In terms of sales, GoDaddy is six times the size of the Dallas Mavericks business, and ~20 times the size Broadcast.com was before the dotcom bust.

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#324

Post by adventured »

ggg9990 wrote: post #293

Your post could easily read: "I've got a killer office space in an amazing skyscraper with catered organic sous vide lunches and a yoga room, but I don't have a business idea to put in this office space. Any ideas?" The most important aspects of a business are: 1) what you do 2) how you do it. Things like team, capital, etc. are secondary and only matter once you have those two. It's a bit like you said, "I have a fa…

Comeon, that scenario worked out great for Ion Storm.

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#325

Post by averageweather »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #170

My simple advice is to stop looking for ideas and to start looking for problems. Look for the pain, and to do that talk to people. The challenge will be that most people accommodate the pain in order to get something done, but they don't like it. A recent pain point I came across was that 501.c(3) organizations are good at organizing but often poor at "the Internet". That suggested that if you talked to a half dozen…

I used to think Dane Maxwell of The Foundation was the crazy one, and all those infopreneurs with blogs were geniuses.

I’ve since realized how wrong I was. Dane’s big thing was about interviewing small businesses, finding a pain and then being paid to solve that pain with a saas product. Seems pretty logical to me now.

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#326

Post by briandear »

damosneeze wrote: post #158
sauwan wrote: post #107

Here's my idea. All I ask for is a free one if you use it. A drone fence. Hear me out. Problem: Fencing is FUCKING expensive. For many people who want to keep animals out (garden, animals pooping in the sandbox) buying a fence is really cost prohibitive. Plus they don't always work anyways. Solution: Self driving drones with IR cameras in specific locations. Place a camera or two in strategic locations, and have a dr…

Pretty good, but also quite niche. I think many people who build fences are not doing it just to keep things out, but also to keep things in, mark territory, provide security against more than just deer, aesthetics, etc. However, on the fence industry, I could see a shake-up of fence estimation software. Perhaps one that uses ML to take the data necessary for an estimation (geographic data based on asker's location +…

I remember when I was a catastrophe insurance adjuster, I used Xactimate. It was pretty great at the time, but I think the underlying tech (i.e. getting material pricing) could be greatly improved, especially dealing with things like shortages and increased prices due to demand spikes.

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#327

Post by lj3 »

exabrial wrote: post #300
lj3 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This stuff sounds more like R&D than markets to build products for. Way too risky for a company that hasn't even proven they can deliver a product where most of the technical problems have already been solved.

Interesting comment, I assumed all good idea required r&d!

That's the mindset of an engineer at work. Engineers want hard, sexy problems to chew on. Businessmen want stable, predictable tech with large margins (low production costs and a high selling price). This is why a lot of people talk about converting an excel spreadsheet into a SaaS business. It's ridiculously easy, low cost, stable, predictable revenue that companies will happily pay for to not have to deal with their excel spreadsheets ever again.

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#328

Post by isaaclyman »

7alman wrote: post #175

If you have a hard time coming up with ideas, you probably shouldn't start a company.

This is harsh, but true. I've never heard a successful founder say "I don't know, I just wanted to start a company with my friends and get rich." Every dang middle-schooler in the US wants that. Companies are a means, not an end. Successful ones always start with someone who's passionate about a very specific problem.

This really comes out in corporate mission statements. Even if you're Xerox, your mission statement is something like "Improve the rate of business communications by creating the world's most excellent copy machines."

If you don't have an idea for a startup, you're missing the key ingredient. The team literally cannot exist without that visionary person who knows exactly what they're after.

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#329

Post by mchasse »

I think that the general advice of "find something that bugs you and then fix it" is a particularly bad way of building a business because you run a very high risk of building something that nobody else wants. In general, "you" != "your customer".

My advice would be to go out and find some group of people/companies and then ask them what problems are they currently facing that are not currently ideally solved (stressed out moms, small businesses, etc. It really doesn't matter, just a large accessible group who may have problems that could be solved via ML).

This way, you don't need to know really anything about the domain because the interviewees will know the space well enough and will tell you what's wrong with it (and will most likely list ideas on how to fix it.) This will also remove your worry about the space being crowded because even if it is, if your interviewees are saying that there is still an unsolved problem, then there is still opportunity for you.

Another idea is to attend a startup weekend and learn how to quickly test assumptions/prototype and then try and replicate the process during the week. (e.g. run one full validation sprint per week, every week on different ideas until something gains traction.)

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#330

Post by xstartup »

I was a CEO of 3 successful startups. I am a developer (Python, Go, JavaScript not a very good one or devs here on HN with ML/AI or other experience). I don't have any formal education either. I just pursue whatever interests me. I am more focused on the technical side, sales and marketing, and customer service. I did all this at my previous startups. I never raised any funds and the previous companies mostly did 1-5M in yearly revenues and were bootstrapped with my own savings (which I got through selling apps when it was relatively quite easy). This time I've found a new 50MM USD annual revenue opportunity as per my very conservative estimate. The idea is sketchy but all my previous successful products had some evil bit in them. I can see and feel it but can't bring it to reality. I'll need a couple of blockchain experts, lots of salespeople, good copywriters. I write my own marketing angels but need someone to present my words to the audience as I am not a native speaker.
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