81–90 of 146 posts
Namely, people who went to an elite school (which inevitably implies they have rich parents) and aren't going to burden your fledgling cash grab with any world-weary ideas about integrity. Extra points if no one involved in the project has any programming talent. That frees up lots of time for coming up with brilliant ideas.
> (By the way, it’s useful to get good at differentiating between real trends and fake trends. A key differentiator is if the new platform is used a lot by a small number of people, or used a little by a lot of people.) As a one-time founder, I feel embarrassed to have to ask this; but in the spirit of no-stupid-question and also that there's gotta be someone else wondering the same -- which one is the real trend and…
There's two competing lenses of thought that bookend your struggle: On one hand, Sam's point is basically described by Paul Graham's essay on "Narrow and Deep" ideas [1]. You want an idea to have a few passionate users rather than lots of lukewarm users, because there's an activation energy to building a habit and if you're only lukewarm you're not going to get over it. As PG put it, "Sum that reaction over a whole p…
I think the USA implementation is poor not the idea is bad. Here Finland K-ryhmä[1] did really nailed implementation and it is like 10x better than going to the supermarket. My mom and aunt both in their 70 started using this separately and both are saying they are not going to back in supermarkets after covid19.
We were a no-idea company in the S12 batch. We ended up starting Streem [1], which was acquired by Box in 2014 [2] and ended up integrating and becoming Box Drive [3]. While we didn't build an enduring company, I'd say it was a moderate success by some metrics.
YC had two no-ideas in S12 and another one or two in W13 before they shut the track down. Unclear if that's enough data to spot a trend, but YC is smart and likely had other data to back up the decision. Looking back, it was a painful process to go from "no idea" to what eventually became Streem. I don't think I'd ever go and decide to start another company without an idea in the future.
[1] https://lifehacker.com/streem-offers-unlimited-cloud-storage...
[2] https://venturebeat.com/2014/06/16/box-acquires-streem-so-yo...
> YC once tried an experiment of funding seemingly good founders with no ideas. I think every company in this no-idea track failed. We were a no-idea company in the S12 batch. We ended up starting Streem [1], which was acquired by Box in 2014 [2] and ended up integrating and becoming Box Drive [3]. While we didn't build an enduring company, I'd say it was a moderate success by some metrics. YC had two no-ideas in S12…
For example Reddit's original team wanted to do a "My Mobile Menu", and also Aaron Swartz pivoted from Infogami to merging with Reddit.
I would almost count this partially under the "no idea" category.
An idea? Okay: Setup a software as a service Web site to solve quickly all traveling salesman problems with fewer than, say, 1 million cities, and everything equivalent in computational complexity to them.
First difficulty: To write the server side software, basically are asking for an algorithm that shows that P = NP, and now we have had some decades to conclude that so far no one knows how to do that (with a von Neumann computer, but maybe could get a solution using a quantum computer).
Well, for positive integer n Lesson 1: This idea was super easy to find!
Lesson 2: What it takes to make this idea work is something new, and, if we get a solution, that would contradict the observation that there are no good new ideas because all the good ideas were thought of long ago.
Lesson 3: Finding an algorithm that shows that P = NP is challenging, but with that algorithm would have one heck of a strong technological barrier to entry and a contradiction to the claim that it is easy to copy a startup!
My real point: Have two lists. List A has the problems that plenty of people would pay big bucks to have solved. List B has the tools for solving problems. Pick a pair from lists A and B where the tool from B solves the problem from A.
Next, if there is no suitable tool in list B, then do some research and find one. If can't find a tool for the problem from A, then pick another problem from A and try again to do the research to find the needed tool.
The research need not be as challenging as proving that P = NP. But broadly one way to find "good ideas" is do some research that yields a tool that enables solving a problem from list A that has been sitting there for a long time unsolved due to the lack of a suitable tool from list B.
That is, one way to find a "good idea" is to do some research.
If we are restricting to having von Neumann computers do the data manipulations, then we can notice that the manipulations are necessarily mathematically something so that an enabling tool and the research are about forced to be in applied math.
It might also be sufficient to use some of the math on the shelves of the research libraries, math that so far has been neglected by the information startup culture.
Possible psychological issue: It may be that we frequently see good problems to solve but right away, within a few seconds, implicitly, maybe even unconsciously, reject solving the problem as a startup idea because we don't see a suitable tool for a solution. Well, then, slow down a little on the rejection step and consider some research or just what is already in the research libraries. Uh, there's a lot in the research libraries!
> (By the way, it’s useful to get good at differentiating between real trends and fake trends. A key differentiator is if the new platform is used a lot by a small number of people, or used a little by a lot of people.) As a one-time founder, I feel embarrassed to have to ask this; but in the spirit of no-stupid-question and also that there's gotta be someone else wondering the same -- which one is the real trend and…
Genuine question, were they? I've yet to see any data on the FREQUENCY of usage of these dApps. There was certainly a lot of buzz.
> (By the way, it’s useful to get good at differentiating between real trends and fake trends. A key differentiator is if the new platform is used a lot by a small number of people, or used a little by a lot of people.) As a one-time founder, I feel embarrassed to have to ask this; but in the spirit of no-stupid-question and also that there's gotta be someone else wondering the same -- which one is the real trend and…
There's two competing lenses of thought that bookend your struggle: On one hand, Sam's point is basically described by Paul Graham's essay on "Narrow and Deep" ideas [1]. You want an idea to have a few passionate users rather than lots of lukewarm users, because there's an activation energy to building a habit and if you're only lukewarm you're not going to get over it. As PG put it, "Sum that reaction over a whole p…
(Yes I know about Dreamwidth, I also miss having my friends all there and getting them writing essays again when Twitter is so tempting is an uphill climb.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Genuine question: what apps/technology is growing quickly with DeFi that can't otherwise be practically executed (for whatever reason) outside of a blockchain? I've yet to see a killer example.
A perfect killer example is globally accessible prediction markets. They always get shut down by governments. Isn’t it crazy that you currently can’t place a bet on a horse race or a presidential election in the US?
How do you manage your ideas? I'm using a combination of Google Sheets, Notion, and a notebook. I rate each idea in Sheets using colors and I keep Notion and a notebook for research so that I don't think about an idea twice.
I have always found that entire scenario very odd. How are you a start up founder if you don’t know what you want to start up? I always look at that like a soldier jacked up on adrenaline wearing an arsenal of ammunition ready to destroy the enemy having forgotten to ask who the enemy is or where they are. Lost. Maybe if they just start spraying ammo at everybody the enemy will suddenly make themselves known and some…
I am sceptical too but it's not an unusual idea to think that perhaps you can just put smart people together and they'll work something out. God knows that much of that attitude is often lauded on HN for other things.
I am entering my fifth military deployment so I can speak to the nature of spontaneously formed teams of strangers. Intelligence is largely, but not completely, irrelevant. You learn to identify that a team is strongest due to a mix of good discipline and putting the proper personalities in the correct positions and then codifying a single common purpose. I recommend reading the book Good To Great for further examination.