Finding Profitable Startup Ideas • Hacker News Board

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#51

Post by scoot » Sat, Jan 27, 2018, 11:40 PM UTC

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…

With respect, if they were truly your friends, you would know their number. The fact that you don't makes me deeply suspicious of the veracity of the rest of your claim.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#52

Post by ajeet_dhaliwal » Sat, Jan 27, 2018, 11:44 PM UTC

I’m currently reading ‘Blue Ocean Strategy’, the book where these red and blue ocean terms come from and I feel like what he’s describing sort of is blue ocean strategy even though he says it’s not, the Chipotle example is for sure.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#53

Post by gfodor » Sun, Jan 28, 2018, 12:13 AM UTC

fogzen wrote: post #46

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 i…

What you're referring to here are boring old commerical loans. Of course you're never going to get a bank to lend you money unless they can be sure you will repay the principal.

If you're throwing money at risky ventures where you may lose your investment entirely it seems reasonable to expect a large amount of upside.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#54

Post by mindcrime » Sun, Jan 28, 2018, 12:13 AM UTC

NicoJuicy wrote: post #24

brucephillips wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean?

Blue ocean = unicorn business. The billion dollar companies that search funding

Blue ocean = unicorn business.

It's been a while since I read the book, but I don't think that's quite right. A market can be a "blue ocean" but be too small to support a billion dollar business. And you can certainly build a billion dollar business in a red ocean, if you just execute better than everybody else.

Now if one was to say "assuming sufficient size, it's easier to make a billion dollar company in a blue ocean market" then I think that would absolutely be true.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#55

Post by chubot » Sun, Jan 28, 2018, 12:55 AM UTC

brucephillips wrote: post #3

The author doesn't describe the most reliable indicator of new opportunity, which is economic change. Change can come in the form of shifting demographics, new tech, or new product adoption. These are the events that increase demand or decrease cost for a new product opportunity. They should be where you direct your attention.

Yup, PG wrote an essay on this: "How To Be an Expert in a Changing World".

http://www.paulgraham.com/ecw.html

When experts are wrong, it's often because they're experts on an earlier version of the world.

I absolutely believe there IS a "static world fallacy", and it gets particularly acute as you get older (and I'm not young).

A couple really obvious examples are say Apple's App Store, or Google AdWords. Huge companies have been built on those drastic changes in the environment. If you understood those things early, you had a tremendous advantage. AdWords was tremendously effective when it first came out. I know a number of people who built single-person companies on top of it.

Beware of hindsight bias: it's easy to think that those things were "obviously big", but there were plenty of other things going on at the time that you could have directed your attention toward.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#56

Post by comstock » Sun, Jan 28, 2018, 12:58 AM UTC

The last sentence really stuck home to me (edited for clarity):

While these Red Ocean ideas may not result in creating multibillion dollar companies they do offer opportunity that can lead to riches and personal autonomy.

It’s sad that we live in a world where the goal of personal autonomy is so lofty. We have an over abundance of resources in the West. And yet having the freedom to work on useful things under our own direction is rare. It’s a shame that having “autonomy” is such a difficult goal to obtain.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#57

Post by brucephillips » Sun, Jan 28, 2018, 1:01 AM UTC

comstock wrote: post #56

The last sentence really stuck home to me (edited for clarity): While these Red Ocean ideas may not result in creating multibillion dollar companies they do offer opportunity that can lead to riches and personal autonomy. It’s sad that we live in a world where the goal of personal autonomy is so lofty. We have an over abundance of resources in the West. And yet having the freedom to work on useful things under our ow…

You're underestimating how expensive that goal is. Providing every adult with basic income so that they can pursue their dreams would bankrupt the country.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#58

Post by fogzen » Sun, Jan 28, 2018, 1:05 AM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #53

fogzen wrote: post #46

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 i…

What you're referring to here are boring old commerical loans. Of course you're never going to get a bank to lend you money unless they can be sure you will repay the principal. If you're throwing money at risky ventures where you may lose your investment entirely it seems reasonable to expect a large amount of upside.

That’s my point... the financial system is built to reward the wealthy and does not focus on creating new entrepeneurs. Commercial loans aren’t provided for startups. Only the SBA engages in that and you have to prove you don’t have personal funds and/or be a minority to get them (I know I’ve tried.)

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#59

Post by eli » Sun, Jan 28, 2018, 1:07 AM UTC

lubujackson wrote: post #37

I have issue with the "Blue/Red Ocean" concept. Google is supposedly a Blue Ocean idea. Really? Sure, their approach was novel but the search market was already saturated by Alta Vista, Lycos, Yahoo, etc. You could say the same about Facebook with the competition of Friendster and MySpace. In both cases they took a new angle that let them expand well beyond the existing market, but the market did exist and was alread…

Nobody else was doing AdWords

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#60

Post by danieltillett » Sun, Jan 28, 2018, 1:52 AM UTC

fogzen wrote: post #58

gfodor wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're referring to here are boring old commerical loans. Of course you're never going to get a bank to lend you money unless they can be sure you will repay the principal. If you're throwing money at risky ventures where you may lose your investment entirely it seems reasonable to expect a large amount of upside.

That’s my point... the financial system is built to reward the wealthy and does not focus on creating new entrepeneurs. Commercial loans aren’t provided for startups. Only the SBA engages in that and you have to prove you don’t have personal funds and/or be a minority to get them (I know I’ve tried.)

How do you prove you are a minority?