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

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

#1

Post by 0bsidian »

I have spent the past year looking for good ideas for a startup and have little to show for it.

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-Things that we have:-

1) A great early team, made up of myself (just a normal bizdev guy) + 1 talented former private equity partner (who made a fortune on Wall Street) + 1 talented CMU CompSci PhD. The three of us have been friends for years and work together really well.

2) Investors that are willing to write blank checks (within reason) because of the trust in the team (mainly former colleagues of the PE guy).

3) Cash in the bank to continue experimenting

4) An interest in SaaS and ML (and some experience in the latter)

-Things that we don't have:-

1) Ideas of what to do

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We have read EVERYTHING on how to come up with startups ideas (ranging from Paul Graham essays to The Mom Test). We have ran interviews with friends in corporate and startups, asked old colleagues, attented conferences, organised meetups in our city, a ton of time spent networking, etc.

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.

We will not give up but are getting unsure on how to break the stalemate.

Any tips or advice?

Thanks!

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

#2

Post by startupdiscuss »

I don't think you should drop an "idea" just because the space is crowded or commoditized so long as the problem in the space has not been "solved."

Consider that there were many search engines before Google and many social networks before Facebook and so on.

All spaces are crowded but there is still lots of room for improvement. Even a simple todo app doesn't do quite all the things everyone needs. You can imagine super versions of a todo that automatically uses your calendar to allocate time to the tasks. Then when people want to meet with you, it show you options that are spaced so you have time for your tasks and then analyzes the tasks you do and don't get done, and notices what the differences and then allocates the right time for the right task (morning for creative, night for braindead, lunch for meetings) or whatever.

The problems are the same problems. Just look at the current solutions and you can see they are lacking. Then the question is, can you find a good way to solve them. (You code up the above solution and simply doesn't work, for example. )

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

#4

Post by typetehcodez »

I would highly recommend "Jump Start Your Brain" by Doug Hill. On page 88 there is a "Eureka" formula you can use to generate ideas. (#of good ideas = ((number of stimuli)^(diversity))/fear) Once you have an idea, just pull the trigger and start working on it. It sounds like you have a lot already, but are holding yourself back for some reason. Just take some action! Pick something.

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

#5

Post by coryl »

You find ideas by digging for them in the dirt. This observation might be a little more focused towards programmers, however.

Explore spaces where change is rapidly occurring, and build things with those technologies/platforms/markets. You'll encounter problems along the way, be they legal, technical, distribution, etc. Some of those problems will be experienced by others and so you may stumble across a viable market. But you'll only know that by walking down those paths, rather than gazing from afar.

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

#6

Post by throwaway2912 »

Are you looking for an idea or a “sexy” idea?

You could build an Ecommerce and sell stuff. Spend a few grands on some products and see which one converts the best. Or create the landing of some of your ideas and see if people will leave their info by buying some advertising on Facebook/Google.

A crowded market doesn’t necessarily mean that you have no chance. The key here is positioning your product to make it look different. If you have cash to spend you can actually test a lot of “boring” ideas by differentiating them (e.g. another to-do app that does X or is made for Y).

Even better, which problems do you face daily?

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

#7

Post by hoodoof »

The one thing I am never short of is ideas.

I used to think they'd stop coming but always new ideas come and I write them down in a list now. Too many to execute.

Some good, some probably not so great.

The accepted wisdom is that ideas are worth nothing but I strongly disagree. I think most ideas are worth nothing, but some ideas are incredibly valuable so I don't give my ideas away in case I want to make use of them one day.

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

#8

Post by coreyp_1 »

I'm tempted to ask to join your group, but I'm finishing my PhD myself (in the spring), so I'm a bit busy! :)

My most important suggestion is the simplest: Come up with more ideas. Take a look through this guy's posts: https://medium.com/@x0054. Specifically, he set a goal to come up with 10 random ideas a day for a month. They are all over the place in terms of quality and practicality. Some of them are silly; some are outstanding. If you do this for a month (as do each of your partners, individually), you will have close to 1,000 ideas to comb through. Something will rise to the top.

Creativity is a habit. Creativity is a skill.

As for myself, I have several ideas that have risen to the top (out of hundreds) that are definitely money-makers, but I don't (yet) have the resources to pursue by myself. The hardest part for me is to find others who are motivated enough to bootstrap a business! It sounds like you have a good group, though, and for that I congratulate you and wish you luck!

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