Ask YC: When did you start having interesting ideas?

The other day I was trying to recall examples of specific interesting ideas I'd had before I started keeping an idea journal, which was around the time I went started college. The funny thing is that I really couldn't come up with much of anything. There was an essay that I'd posted on my homepage about an insight I'd had my freshman year of high school, but that was the earliest specific example of a non-trivial idea I could remember having. So I am still trying to figure out whether I just didn't start having interesting ideas before a certain point, or whether I did have interesting ideas but have just forgotten them all because I didn't write them down. I'm leaning toward never having had interesting ideas in the first place, but it's difficult to say. There seems to be a lot of cognitive research on ability to remember specific tangible events and routines from childhood, but not so much on ability to remember one's early ideas.

So how do I define an interesting idea? As a working definition, I'd say a prerequisite is that it's something novel. Maybe not totally unique, but at the least the kind of idea where you say, wow, I bet maybe maybe a few dozen or a couple hundred people have had this same sequence of thoughts before.

Examples: Seth Godin had an interesting idea the other day that as the price of gas increased and telecommuting became more common, the expectations for the quality of in-person interactions is going to increase accordingly. Nothing super complicated, just a simple cause and effect, but still I think it meets the minimum level for being novel and interesting. Seth comes up with a lot of novel ideas. Edge.org is filled with them.

I don't want to give any definition that's too precise though because I don't want my preconceptions to bias others. Other people obviously spend their time thinking about different stuff than me, so the set of things that qualify is probably larger than anything I'll be able to clearly articulate.

So when did you start having interesting ideas? What was the first non-trivial idea you ever remember having?

I started writing ideas in blue books when I was very young (like 7 or 8). Most were stupid, but a few were good at the time, and in fact later become commercially available products. Of course, I always thought "Hey! I thought of that first, but I'm eight and can't do anything about it".

I only did this sporadically (regrettably - not only would I have a lot of ideas by now, but I'd have something humorous to look back at and/or give my kids), but I started having lots more ideas toward the end of my undergrad time and during grad school. My idea generation dipped for a while after grad school because, you know, life gets in the way. But it has picked back up again as my life has stabilized and I've started keeping a tiddlywiki of ideas. Most bad, a few good. None brilliant.

First non-trivial idea? I don't remember. I think it may have had something to do with a novel way of feeding cows or something like that (I grew up on a semi-working farm). As if cows need a new way to eat.

I've always found a lot of my ideas interesting; it's just that for most of them I eventually proved them to be bad ideas.

Also, interesting ideas are rarely individual insights but usually come from merging two or more different ideas in a new way to create something genuinely cool.

I'm guessing around 10 years old (but perhaps even earlier) when I decided to design and build a briefcase containing various hidden compartments.

I also remember, before that, reading Splinter of the Mind's Eye and being impressed that Luke could recharge his lightsaber from Han's blaster and spent a long time working on designs for universal plugs and sockets that would allow arbitrary recharging between devices. I am still waiting for this to be possible.

But well before that (say around 6-7 years old) I recall drawing devices (just can't tell you what they did!)

So for me the specific example I was thinking of was this:

"it's damn hard to get into an Ivy League school. Even valedictorians and kids with perfect SATs are rejected from their top picks every year. But athletes got into the best schools even with mediocre grades...

Let's think about this logically. To get into an Ivy as just a student you basically need straight A's, 1400 SATs, and lots of extracurriculars. This meant I'd have to go to school eight hours a day, do two or three hours of extracurriculars, and then go home to six or so hours of homework. As an athlete A's and B's are fine as long as you don't have any C's, and you don't need any major extracurriculars other than your sport. That's what the coaches will tell you when you're being recruited at least, but in reality a couple C's are usually fine if you just want to go to an Ivy but you don't much care which. This would require going through the motions of being a student, and then practicing a couple hours a day year-round. Same result, less work, more fun!"

The logic behind this doesn't really make sense unless you're stuck in the mentality of a zero-sum world. That said, this thinking seems to have been a precursor of sorts to later and more interesting musings on zero-sum systems.

I can only remember a handful of specific ideas I had before that which I'm still vaguely impressed with today.