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Idea Generation

blog.samaltman.com

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Re: Idea Generation

#91

Post by boulos »

atupis wrote: post #82
nostrademons wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>grocery delivery 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. [1] https://www.k-ruoka.fi/kauppa

For folks in the Bay Area, I constantly recommend Good Eggs (goodeggs.com). They’re serious farm-to-consumer folks and have small producers and fishmongers that you wouldn’t see otherwise (many of the names will be familiar from restaurant menus).

After having gone through CSAs, our various decent grocers, and then realizing there were “no” retail fishmongers, a friend had recommended Good Eggs and we’ve never gone back. It’s not for everyone, as it’s basically only the priciest things you’d find at Whole Foods, but it’s also delivered to your door and without a large-scale grocery chain in between.

Covid-19 has obviously strained their availability, but overall they’ve still been amazing.

Re: Idea Generation

#92

Post by yowlingcat »

godot wrote: post #24

> (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…

> I feel embarrassed to have to ask this > which one is the real trend and which one is the fake trend

As is usual with these kinds of YC posts, a lot of clarifying detail is handwaved away in the name of expediency and clarity of expression. "used a lot by a small number of people, or used a little by a lot of people." -- what a great heuristic! And certainly not useless.

But it doesn't help you figure out that learning how to figure out that difference when the entities are not at rest but in motion is the whole challenge and art in the first place. Sadly, I guess this is a good way for you to answer your question. Nobody outside of an early adopter ever had a practical usage for a Dapp, which is how you know the idea is a solution in search of a problem.

Re: Idea Generation

#93

Post by nl »

fouc wrote: post #84
ritikm wrote: post #83

> 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…

Didn't ycombinator pick a number of startups with bad ideas or non-ideas and encouraged them to pivot? Or encourage new teams to form around a different idea? 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.

There's plenty of YC Companies that have changed their idea during YC, or pivoted completely during the program (I think Daniel Gross pivoted twice?)

I think YC expects most companies to modify what they are doing during the program.

But all of these things are very different to taking someone on board with no idea at all.

Re: Idea Generation

#94

Post by jamesrcole »

Another means: have really high standards. It’ll make you better at spotting when something ought to be easier to accomplish. You’ll instinctively feel irritated by the fact that it isn’t.

Re: Idea Generation

#95

Post by hyperpallium »

nostrademons wrote: post #52
godot wrote: post #24

> (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…

From a VC's point of view, for early startups, only pre-chasm matters. If many don't cross, well, it's a numbers game.

Re: Idea Generation

#96

Post by nostrademons »

hyperpallium wrote: post #95
nostrademons wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

From a VC's point of view, for early startups, only pre-chasm matters. If many don't cross, well, it's a numbers game.

Oftentimes the VC cash is needed to actually cross the chasm. One of the difference between early and mainstream adopter populations is that a lot more product polish, and oftentimes explicit sales or advertising outreach, is needed to please the mainstream audience. That all costs money.

I wouldn't say that only pre-chasm matters, though. VCs usually refuse to invest in startups that have zero chance of crossing the chasm. The prototypical example of this is say an app for D&D players. You could have the most passionate userbase, and the app could be critical to their experience, but your total addressable market maxes out at the 13.7M D&D players worldwide and it's unlikely they'd spend more than say $10 each on it, which makes it unattractive to all but the smallest VC firms.

Re: Idea Generation

#97

Post by sytelus »

There are two kinds of idea generation: hole plugging and door opening. The former means you look for holes in current state of affairs and use available tech to plug it. The later means you invent something very new and open doors to entirely new opportunities. Former requires cheap short term less risky trials while later is usually more systematic long term expensive endeavors. Unfortunately startups have became synonymous only for the hole plugging even though door opening is an order of magnitude more rewarding. This is the difference between Twitter and flying cars. I hope there is YC like model that gets developed for door opening instead of keep fueling hole plugging through college dropouts.

Re: Idea Generation

#98

Post by ImaCake »

ritikm wrote: post #83

> 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…

The line about the experiment made me consider if "no ideas" is a symptom or a cause.

Borrowing from epidemiology, I think "no ideas" might be an effect modifier. That is, it is just an intermediate step when going from the exposing factor to the outcome (the outcome, we know, is failing start-ups). It would be interesting to know what the real proximal cause is, or at least a really good proxy for it.

Maybe YCombinator could benefit from the input of a biostatistician or similar statistical expert to design some cohort studies on start ups.

Re: Idea Generation

#99

Post by fxtentacle »

egypturnash wrote: post #88
RexetBlell wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Do you have any killer examples that aren’t, um, totally illegal?

If it's legal, people prefer credit card over Blockchain.

Re: Idea Generation

#100

Post by imtringued »

mrfusion wrote: post #73

Here are some ideas but they don’t seem any good: Graham crackers with chocolate pre applied for making s’mores. A racing league for bipedal robots.

Racing league for bipedal robots sounds like a good concept for a commercial/promotional event if you already have a bipedal robot company but it isn't something you would build a company around.
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