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Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

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Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#41

Post by [deleted] »

slinger wrote: post #25
csallen wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is somewhat covered in the "Industry Growth Rates" section: > At any given time, there are dozens of industries operating within new and underserved markets that are experiencing rapid growth… This almost always represents a possible entrepreneurial opportunity. His strategy might benefit from incorporating some of the things you mentioned — shifting demographics, new tech, etc. Then again, one of the most commo…

> At any given time, there are dozens of industries operating within new and underserved markets that are experiencing rapid growth IMO finding a market that is rapid growing is the most difficult part. It seems that I can never find a good idea worth pursuing.

[deleted]

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#42

Post by danieltillett »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #34
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #4

Are there research firms that do ground work research, focus groups, talk to people on the street, build real professional networks to extract "problem stories" for ideas, and do competition research to the same level that e.g. short sellers might? Are these just normal market research firms, and are there boutique firms that have low-volume, high value clients?

The problem is, people's words are not reliable. You can ask 100 people "would you pay $5/month for app X", and maybe 25 will say they would, but only 3 actually will when you build it. There only real way to avoid building a useless MVP is to ask to pre-pay for a product that doesn't exist yet.

Even that doesn't work if the product is in any way complex.

In someways I think it is better to concentrate on value to the purchasing decision maker. Provide the decision maker with real value below the CAC and you have a valid business idea.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#44

Post by FLUX-YOU »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #34
FLUX-YOU wrote: post #4

Are there research firms that do ground work research, focus groups, talk to people on the street, build real professional networks to extract "problem stories" for ideas, and do competition research to the same level that e.g. short sellers might? Are these just normal market research firms, and are there boutique firms that have low-volume, high value clients?

The problem is, people's words are not reliable. You can ask 100 people "would you pay $5/month for app X", and maybe 25 will say they would, but only 3 actually will when you build it. There only real way to avoid building a useless MVP is to ask to pre-pay for a product that doesn't exist yet.

Just asking in passing will mean they have to digest that app very quickly and then try to make a decision. So that's not really surprising.

I found more benefit just focusing on problems, like "What annoys you at work related to your job"? Unless they just can't articulate, you quickly find things to latch onto where a technical product (software, hardware, whatever) might help and you go into more detail with them.

The goal is really finding under-served markets, which I think what the article says to do, because products seem pretty straight-forward once you know those problems exist.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#46

Post by fogzen »

There are plenty of profitable business ideas but you can’t get capital for them because they aren’t going to be billion dollar ventures with 10x returns. The problem with entrepreneurship in America is lack of micro financing and support for starting small business - not lack of ideas or lack of people.

How many more entrepreneurs and businesses could we create if financing was focused on capitalizing new business instead of only seeking the largest profit for the sake of enriching banks and already wealthy investors.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#47

Post by Zalastax »

brucephillips wrote: post #35
slinger wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At any given time, there are dozens of industries operating within new and underserved markets that are experiencing rapid growth IMO finding a market that is rapid growing is the most difficult part. It seems that I can never find a good idea worth pursuing.

What do you mean "worth pursuing"? Do you mean that you can't find an idea worth investigating further? Or do you mean that you can't find an idea that survives a month of concentrated market research? The latter is reasonable. The former isn't. You should be able to come up with lots of ideas worth following up on. Let's play a game. Someone give me a product category, and I'll list ideas that are at least worth mor…

Furniture is a category or products I have so many problems with (with a viewpoint from Sweden)... I'll let you write some ideas and then chime in with the problems I have seen.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#49

Post by dbcurtis »

ericd wrote: post #19
boulos wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How long did your “non-funded” friends put into it before it could pay their own expenses? Unless it was really fast, it’s probably more accurate to call it self-funded or bootstrapped and then compare numbers. I’m not disagreeing that bootstrapping can often be the better path, but it’s also not credibly available to everyone. What percentage of folks can work for a year without pay? In my experience it’s fairly “U-…

Self funding amounts and seed funding amounts are generally at least an order of magnitude different, sometimes two. It doesn't really make sense to draw an equivalency between them. For example, I started my company with 20k of savings. It's not uncommon for seed rounds to be in the 2M and up range now.

I was going to say something like that. There is a tendancy around HN to equate "startup" with: Me, my laptop, and a couple of AWS instances at $0.70/hr.

On the other hand, if "default alive" means paying a pattern shop for a master pattern and buying 1000 aluminum castings to fill in 3% of your BOM cost, most folks need outside money.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#50

Post by lap2 »

lettergram wrote: post #10

It's interesting that of the many friends I have who started companies (10 - 12), only two of them didn't receive funding. Both businesses built from scratch and now have a revenue somewhere in the neighborhood of $1m a year after two years. That's honestly pretty good IMO. The other eight or so friends who started companies accepted some form of money. Of those, only two are still in existance. The survival rate of…

What kind of companies did they start? Consulting business or product business?
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