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Ask HN: How do you decide between startup ideas?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you decide between startup ideas?

#21

Post by Thriptic »

thisisxavier wrote: post #4

Don't want to hijack the thread, but even more basically, how do you get startup ideas? I've read what PG has to say and others, but nothing is clicking.

Find a domain expert and ask them to walk you through their day or shadow them. Also, ask them what sucks. I could literally throw ten ideas at you right now of fixable things of various complexity in my domain (academic bioengineering).

Another strategy is to look for large problems in your industry that have been solved and then try to find analogous problems in other industries where the same or a similar solution could work.

For our startup, my co-founder and I went and talked to friends and contacts of mine in medicine and generated a list of 15 or so things we thought were everyday pain points for many individuals. We then shelled out some money and went to an industry conference to field test them. It turns out that all of them were being actively worked on, but while we were exploring them we stumbled upon another idea which is now the basis for our startup.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide between startup ideas?

#22

Post by jacquesm »

rsweeney21 wrote: post #11

I used Steve Blank's formula he described in "The Startup Owner's Manual". Steve is a legend and the process works. I spent 12 months working on a variety of startup ideas, testing them in the market, pivoting and moving on to the next one. Eventually we found one that got traction (paying customers). Two years later, we just closed $13M in series A funding and have dozens of happy customers. http://markets.businessi…

So, how do you like enterprise sales?

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide between startup ideas?

#24

Post by mitchellst »

john_moscow wrote: post #19
mitchellst wrote: post #6

For my part, I think the partners are much more important than the idea. Good companies can pivot to find a good market. Bad partners will sink you, or never get off the ground to begin with. Select for team, not for idea. The best idea is the one that can attract and motivate a great team, or one put forward by people you want to work with. FWIW, I recall Paul Graham writing something that explains how he screens YC…

Except there's a great caveat with this approach. People that are highly productive and self-motivated often don't give a pleasant impression because they are fascinated with the idea and don't care for the looks. And vice versa, those who will look like a great friendly team, will be passionate about, well, looking great and friendly. They will spend time getting together, having endless pleasant talks about the lat…

I think this is fine for excusing the social quirks of individual contributors. If you're talking co-founders, though, I'd consider this "caveat" a red flag. If a person can't bring himself to make a positive impression to other human beings because he's too enamored of the "idea and doesn't care for the looks," he probably doesn't have the requisite maturity to co-found a business that will employ people.

Of course, some people really are all talk and no action. But I suspect you're assuming too strong a correlation with social skills. The fact is that there are plenty of brilliantly social people who can and do execute, and plenty of smart introverts who can't. I'm not saying, "go into business with your friends!" I'm saying go into business with people you trust and respect.

The corollary is to become someone who is trusted and respected by people who don't share the same skills and biases you have. Good places to start: seriously consider whether "the looks" have merit, and practice carrying friendly conversations.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide between startup ideas?

#26

Post by Nasho »

Thriptic wrote: post #21
thisisxavier wrote: post #4

Don't want to hijack the thread, but even more basically, how do you get startup ideas? I've read what PG has to say and others, but nothing is clicking.

Find a domain expert and ask them to walk you through their day or shadow them. Also, ask them what sucks. I could literally throw ten ideas at you right now of fixable things of various complexity in my domain (academic bioengineering). Another strategy is to look for large problems in your industry that have been solved and then try to find analogous problems in other industries where the same or a similar solution…

I'm interested in hearing about those ten ideas and your startup.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide between startup ideas?

#27

Post by horsecaptin »

- Which company do you see yourself working crazy hours in?

- Which company pays you the better base salary?

- Which company has a business model that you can get behind.

- Which company will let you achieve personal goals (perhaps you'd like to get fit, or travel, or date and settle down).

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide between startup ideas?

#28

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

thisisxavier wrote: post #10
caseysoftware wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch and listen. When you find common/repeated gaps, problems, and frustrations, stop and look at them. If you care about the problem, find out who else has it, what alternatives there are, what it takes to get a MVP to solve the first 80% of the problem.

Here's my issue: as a software engineer in the Bay Area that spends most of my day coding and then commuting for two hours, I am having this exact problem of watching and listening. Maybe I don't interact much with my environment, but nothing seems to jump out at me that could potentially resemble an idea. I have had some ideas in the past that would have solved one of my problems, but they are very rare.

So if that's your issue, why not try to solve it?

Try having less of a routine, not in terms of schedule but of habits --

Entropy is the crux of creativity.

I've considered making a "life randomization" app to add perturbations to my own habits. So if you solved your own problem, which is also one of mine, you'd have at least one user.

Just a thought.

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide between startup ideas?

#29

Post by edoceo »

karambahh wrote: post #18

Another aspect besides the field which others gave great insight about, one aspect is costs and access to capital. When I decided to go the startup route I had a strong idea, validation from potential customers, high barrier to entry for competitors, very small amount of software dev to do, etc. Only problem I needed between 500k-1M€ of starting capital to get the idea rolling. I only had less than 50k€ in my name. I…

This guy does Lean

Re: Ask HN: How do you decide between startup ideas?

#30

Post by edoceo »

thisisxavier wrote: post #4

Don't want to hijack the thread, but even more basically, how do you get startup ideas? I've read what PG has to say and others, but nothing is clicking.

Ages ago there was an Idea Board like site posted on here, where anyone was posting and you could browse for things

Edit: the Google now lists at least 6

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