Ask HN: 23 year old loss in life. What to do now?

Just a bit of background. I'm 23 years old this year. Graduated last year from a top university in UK with a Bachelors(Hons) Chemical Engineering. Right after I graduated, I went back to my home country Malaysia. I always knew I wanted to start a startup. In fact, I did try to start a couple of startups -Tripadvisor-ish for students, Groupon clone and some small 'projects' during the summers like trying to sell "pure fruit juice" during carnivals and stuff like that. None worked out. Last year when I came back, tried to start an online grocery startup but within 2 months, I just knew it wasn't feasible unless I had some decent funding or some sort.

After all these "attempts", I decided to stop and reflect. For the next 6 months, I literally just stayed in my room trying to come up with ideas, but none came up. As PG says "The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself." Meanwhile, I read books and taught myself how to code to pass time. I even started applying to corporate jobs but was rejected for every application. One day, my friend contacted me to ask me to join his startup. I joined, but the company was in a very bad shape and it closed down within 4 months, and that was about 1 month ago. Ever since then, I’ve been trying to sell an animal feed called rumen bypass fat(dad’s idea), but no customers so far. I also tried applying to a few local startups .

So that’s it. I am utterly loss right now. If you asked me what I really want in life, I’d say I want to make a difference on a large scale. I’d like to start a startup that solves hard engineering/science problem. The local startup scene is still playing catch up at the moment. The hot stuffs are ecommerce, on demand startups etc... Hence, I’m not particularly excited about joining the startups in the local scene and I would like to avoid joining big corporate companies. Any advice?

I think you have the general idea - look for problems to solve.

You won't stumble upon ideas locked in your room. You must get a job, any job, and look at all the problems surrounding you.

Think about timing, luck, skill, and opportunity.

luck = preparation + opportunity opportunity=get out there

You can only succeed if you allow yourself to fail. It is better to try and fail than never having tried at all. Try new things, 1 out of 10 start-ups succeed. Look at the past not as failures but as lessons to help you in your next start-up.

Well, the one thing that pops up is to create an Ebook about learning web development in 30 days. It's not going to be a startup or anything. It's just something that I could probably ship it in a month and I might learn how to sell a product at the same time. Only thing is, there are a ton of materials outside for free already, so I could potentially be wasting my time.

I would agree with that advice, but for a different reason.

The fact is the gkjin evidently doesn't have any actual problems in his/her life. Being intelligent enough to go to a top university, wealthy enough to study abroad and then not need a job afterwards, and capable enough to try to start something ... that all adds up to a nice, comfortable life. There aren't any real pains to find solutions for. And seeing pains to find solutions for is where the spark of entrepreneurial inspiration comes from - startups are about seeing a pain and building a solution to it.

Getting a job, regardless of the industry, will expose you to problems that need solving. Most people try to solve them within the limited confines of their job so they can look great to their manager, but the trick to building a startup is to work with the problem long enough to see a solution, and then leave your job to build the solution and sell it back to the industry you worked in. Lots of great, successful startups begin this way.