Idea Generation

I keep most public: https://github.com/captn3m0/ideas. A few are in my WorkFlowy, but only because I haven't written them down properly. And then I have a section in my notebook for ideas. Stuff graduates from there to my GitHub (or gets built)

I've always believed in swombat's quote on HN[1]:

>There's no such thing as an original idea. Every idea worth having has been had thousands of times already.

No point in keeping ideas private. Keeping them public lets other people build things I would like to see, even if I may not have the resources (time/energy/motivation/expertise) to actually do it. It's a win for me either way.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=250793

I think we need to have more founder-typing instead of prescribing everyone act like they can be good at everything.

It’s much more important to find balance on your founding team than expecting to learn idea generation suddenly.

We need better tools for these different types to find each other. Creatives, executors, evangelists, etc can be different people.

> Work in a specific industry long enough that you learn about the trade and type of problems and solutions needed.

The problem with this is that the recent grads with effectively no practical experience to speak of can't start startups with VC funding and dreams of grandeur this way. But I agree that this is the best path to start a company that's actually likely to succeed based on actual long-term profitability and legitimate problem solving.

I touched this subject in another discussion a few days ago briefly. Here is what I've learned over the years:

People keep repeating that you should work on ideas that solve problems that you have yourself. Now given some time on your own, it's natural to start looking at your problems and seeing how to solve them for yourself and potentially others and make a profit along the way. If you want a sinister spin on this, nothing sells better than fear or hope.

But this is HN and as far as tech people go, our instinct is to solve problems that are given to us. And often when we have problems on our own, we come up with a solution and don't really think about it twice. I was recently talking with someone about a project they had at their work and how their company paid something like 3 million euros to another company to build a "platform" for them. And given that their company isn't that large or doesn't have that many users (say 40k/month tops), that raised my eyebrow a bit. So I asked them to show me what that "platform" was. Long story-short, a website with a username and password registration, email verification, paypal subscription, which allows you to download a list of PDF's.

To a developer the whole concept sounds like a joke - anyone with a few months of experience can mash that up in two weeks. "Oh but we have so many users and traffic, it's not that simple."

Bruh... 40k users/month, 100 pdf's, ~2mb each is something a raspberry pi can serve without any issues.

The truth is, most tech people are very much detached from reality(granted that the mass of people is the reality and not the other way around). We try to fix problems which we really don't have ourselves and we over-engineer the crap out of them. And commonly this is the result of the so called "idea generation". It's easy to create a startup that solves a niche problem. But we often fail to acknowledge how tiny these niches really are. It's easier to sell something that costs 10000 euros to 10 people and make 100k as opposed to selling something for 5 euros to 20000 people.

The truth is, most people create 5 euro products which have a potential audience of 10 people, hence the reason why they make 50 euros as opposed to 100k. You can scroll through PH for days and keep repeating "omg, who needs this?!?!?"

I know I have. And truthfully I doubt many people have hit the 50 euro mark, not to mention the 100k.

But people make that mistake all the time. We are surrounded by people who will hook up an led to an arduino which will blink when someone mentions them on slack while they are watching a movie, while ordinary people are looking at a website which has payments and they think that's quantum physics. Tech people and ordinary people live in parallel universes at this point. The ideas we come up with are solutions to problems no one has. That's the reason why SaaS is proving to be a lot more successful strategy than B2C.

My take on this is that every time you come up with an idea, don't bother sharing it with your tech friends first. In most cases you will get a 50-50 positive-negative response. Find people who are completely detached from your world and have no idea what the difference between a USB and RJ45 is.

1. Can you explain your idea in 4 sentences or less?

2. Do they understand it?

3. Do they have that problem?

3a(if Y on 3). Do they have a working solution, even if it takes 3 times the effort?

If the answers to those are:

1. No

2. No

3. No

3a. Yes

Then don't bother. You will almost certainly fail.

I use Sheets and Docs extensively for idea tracking and project kickoff. Docs for a scrachpad of ideas, lists, links. When I start working on something, it gets its own Sheet with a backlog, estimates, progress columns. Once it is published it will likely use GitHub issues or Trello or something a bit more robust. I use Slides to make mini pitch decks and keep all the related files in the same folder on Drive. Next to the main list in Docs.

I am also working on an idea management platform, because I like Sheets but it is also a limiting experience. I'm making automated question-answer with TTS and speech recognition, and hoping to make automatic pitch deck starter kits from question-answer sessions in app. Maybe it'll be a product some day.