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Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

capitalandgrowth.org

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Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#81

Post by borplk »

sumedh wrote: post #78
borplk wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can anyone give a decent concrete real example of "extracting problem stories"? I see this line of thinking repeated a lot but haven't seen any realistic examples that could lead to a viable small businesses. There are obvious ones that you don't need anyone telling you nowadays. Like "I need a good customer support software.". You don't need someone telling you that to know that you can make customer support softwar…

> Or it is "missing features" from other stuff like "Zendesk is ok but it doesn't do ...". The guy who started freshdesk said he read lot of comments on HN about how zendesk sucks so he started freshdesk to solve those problems.

Sure but I don't see where the value of such feedback is.

You can find lots of comments anywhere about how any one product sucks. Many of them will be 10+ year multi-million companies with hundreds or thousands of employees.

It's not like that's going to empower you to compete with them. Or give you some advantage.

Not to mention the difficulty of making something that is better (those "it sucks" comments will be written for your solution too).

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#82

Post by sumedh »

borplk wrote: post #81
sumedh wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or it is "missing features" from other stuff like "Zendesk is ok but it doesn't do ...". The guy who started freshdesk said he read lot of comments on HN about how zendesk sucks so he started freshdesk to solve those problems.

Sure but I don't see where the value of such feedback is. You can find lots of comments anywhere about how any one product sucks. Many of them will be 10+ year multi-million companies with hundreds or thousands of employees. It's not like that's going to empower you to compete with them. Or give you some advantage. Not to mention the difficulty of making something that is better (those "it sucks" comments will be wri…

Looks like you are a glass half empty kind of guy.

The value of such feedback is that it lets you know there is a problem where you can potentially offer a better solution.

> Not to mention the difficulty of making something that is better

Creating a brand new market in more difficult than providing a better solution for an established solution.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#83

Post by Zalastax »

brucephillips wrote: post #72
Zalastax wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can't innovate on furniture directly, but maybe on the design, manufacturing, and distribution processes around it. I have no idea how this industry is structured, but here are some ideas. - Made to order furniture. Let users design their own, or at least mix and match high level componets at a finer detail than ikea. - High end IKEA. Combine the flexibility of Ikea with high end designs and materials. - High level…

Very nice! You hit close to home here! Several ideas that are definitely worth looking into. My problems, which might not be profitable to fix, are:

Very few pieces are composable, we need more things like https://www.prettypegs.com/ Unless you have the capability to build a new IKEA, this is to me the best venue for providing high quality customizability.

Finding furniture is a mess. There's missing information (dimensions, max load), close to useless search, and a bunch of places that sell the same things.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#84

Post by kostarelo »

It looks like the article is not complete. There are still comments in there for missing citations.

> To find out which industries are experiencing rapid growth, its often useful to look at secondary research sources. Three great secondary resources to gauge industry growth are IBIS Industry Reports, Dunn & Bradstreet and SageWorks [insert links for all three]

> Richard White, in The Entrepreneur’s Manual, [insert link to resource] creating a decision tree that divides life by time and experiences exactly in half. For example, White recommends a person initially divide life between work and leisure.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#85

Post by borplk »

sumedh wrote: post #82
borplk wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure but I don't see where the value of such feedback is. You can find lots of comments anywhere about how any one product sucks. Many of them will be 10+ year multi-million companies with hundreds or thousands of employees. It's not like that's going to empower you to compete with them. Or give you some advantage. Not to mention the difficulty of making something that is better (those "it sucks" comments will be wri…

Looks like you are a glass half empty kind of guy. The value of such feedback is that it lets you know there is a problem where you can potentially offer a better solution. > Not to mention the difficulty of making something that is better Creating a brand new market in more difficult than providing a better solution for an established solution.

> The value of such feedback is that it lets you know there is a problem where you can potentially offer a better solution.

I agree there are some cases when that may work but my point is that they are very very rare from what I can see.

The vast majority of cases the complaint or problem statement is already crystal clear and well known such that finding it out doesn't give you any new information or anything of particular value because people always want a better version of what they have anyway.

So you will always get "I want a better Photoshop" or "I want a better Dropbox" or "we like AWS but it doesn't have this feature" stuff.

If the problem is in some very specific small niche that is unknown to most people it would be more useful.

Like some obscure small non-tech-savvy niches that are stuck in the past decades and are so small that no big player bothers with them but perhaps you could make a good small business out of it if you know that they exist and what they are.

For large established markets with well known famous multi-million and multi-billion players saying "$solution sucks" is as useful as saying that the sky is blue.

If you want to get into the customer support desk software market you don't need a bunch of people telling you "Zendesk sucks" for you to know that there's room in that market.

For a category that large there are tons of solutions and between them also tons of very happy and very unhappy people and everything in between.

In the case of Freshdesk/Zendesk (and other similar categories of the same size and popularity) the barrier is overwhelmingly something other than simply knowing that the problem exists.

Everybody knows almost every business needs customer support software. And whatever it is that they have, they always want it to better.

If someone's capable of coming along and challenging something like Zendesk it's not like they need the "aha!" moment or encouragement of a bunch of people saying it sucks.

I'm subscribed to a few sites that send "stated problems" daily/weekly and basically none of them are actionable.

They read like something along the lines of,

"We use Salesforce (or some other giant tool/company) ... it doesn't do this (or needs better UI/UX/API/Integration/etc) ... if there was something better we would consider paying up to $1000."

I just find it difficult to imagine how someone goes from reading that to,

"Aha! I got it. Now I'm going to go and make a better Salesforce."

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#86

Post by gfodor »

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 resolve this without coercion or theft? The only real regulation that I can think of that has reduced fairness and efficiency in startup investing (in favor of protecting the public) has been the accredation requirement, but that is relaxing and probably (for better or worse) going away.

Any other mechanisms to increase risk taking by investors that they are currently unwilling to take today (which basically is what you are looking for) either seem to need to shift the risk elsewhere (ie, onto taxpayers, which is basically a proxy for forced risk taking) or through other regulations, backed by force.

Do you have any reason to think the reason commercial loans don't work for startups has to do with anything other than the obvious: there is insufficient ability for startups to pay interest on the loan, and/or the default risk is too high? If you honestly think there is a market inefficiency here due to cultural bias or structural mispricing on the part of banks, then that sounds like an opportunity.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#87

Post by sumedh »

borplk wrote: post #85
sumedh wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looks like you are a glass half empty kind of guy. The value of such feedback is that it lets you know there is a problem where you can potentially offer a better solution. > Not to mention the difficulty of making something that is better Creating a brand new market in more difficult than providing a better solution for an established solution.

> The value of such feedback is that it lets you know there is a problem where you can potentially offer a better solution. I agree there are some cases when that may work but my point is that they are very very rare from what I can see. The vast majority of cases the complaint or problem statement is already crystal clear and well known such that finding it out doesn't give you any new information or anything of par…

I am not exactly sure what was the whole point of you rant.

FB was better than Myspace, Google was better than other search engines, Slack is better than Skype.

>I agree there are some cases when that may work but my point is that they are very very rare from what I can see.

Do you seriously believe that inventing a new market is less difficult than fixing/improving existing solutions?

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#88

Post by borplk »

sumedh wrote: post #87
borplk wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The value of such feedback is that it lets you know there is a problem where you can potentially offer a better solution. I agree there are some cases when that may work but my point is that they are very very rare from what I can see. The vast majority of cases the complaint or problem statement is already crystal clear and well known such that finding it out doesn't give you any new information or anything of par…

I am not exactly sure what was the whole point of you rant. FB was better than Myspace, Google was better than other search engines, Slack is better than Skype. >I agree there are some cases when that may work but my point is that they are very very rare from what I can see. Do you seriously believe that inventing a new market is less difficult than fixing/improving existing solutions?

I'm talking in the context of small to medium businesses and indie businesses not multi-billion unicorns like FB and Google.

> Do you seriously believe that inventing a new market is less difficult than fixing/improving existing solutions?

Not at all. I didn't mean to imply that.

> not exactly sure what was the whole point of you rant.

The whole point was that I think simplistic and obvious problem statements like "I like AWS but it doesn't have this feature" or "I want a better customer support software" are worthless.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#89

Post by sumedh »

borplk wrote: post #88
sumedh wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not exactly sure what was the whole point of you rant. FB was better than Myspace, Google was better than other search engines, Slack is better than Skype. >I agree there are some cases when that may work but my point is that they are very very rare from what I can see. Do you seriously believe that inventing a new market is less difficult than fixing/improving existing solutions?

I'm talking in the context of small to medium businesses and indie businesses not multi-billion unicorns like FB and Google. > Do you seriously believe that inventing a new market is less difficult than fixing/improving existing solutions? Not at all. I didn't mean to imply that. > not exactly sure what was the whole point of you rant. The whole point was that I think simplistic and obvious problem statements like "I…

> not multi-billion unicorns like FB and Google.

FB and Google were not multi-billion unicorns when they started.

In your previous comment you said it was not entirely worthless but now you are saying such comments are worthless. Atleast make up your mind.

Re: Finding Profitable Startup Ideas

#90

Post by borplk »

sumedh wrote: post #89
borplk wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm talking in the context of small to medium businesses and indie businesses not multi-billion unicorns like FB and Google. > Do you seriously believe that inventing a new market is less difficult than fixing/improving existing solutions? Not at all. I didn't mean to imply that. > not exactly sure what was the whole point of you rant. The whole point was that I think simplistic and obvious problem statements like "I…

> not multi-billion unicorns like FB and Google. FB and Google were not multi-billion unicorns when they started. In your previous comment you said it was not entirely worthless but now you are saying such comments are worthless. Atleast make up your mind.

The part that I said wasn't entirely worthless was about those problem statements that are very specific and niche (I was contrasting that to the worthless ones).

Basic example, "People want more tasty Pizza", "People want better wine" is trivial and worthless.

A much more narrow, specific, and niche example could be valuable. Something like:

"In $area there are lots of migrants living from $country and they love this $local_type_of_bread that you can't find here at all. If you can bake some fresh ones you can probably make good money with it. You could sell them via these local ethnic grocery stores that people there visit often."

Unlike the first example there's some specific and non-trivial information there.

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