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Actionable Ways To Get Startup Ideas

christopherdbui.com

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Re: Actionable Ways To Get Startup Ideas

#11

Post by ruang »

digitailor wrote: post #5

I've never met a successful entrepreneur who sits around trying to come up with business ideas. At the risk of sounding negative and grumpy, groan. Another one of these blogadoodoos. What follows is my $.02, some might disagree. From what I've seen it goes "I have experience in this area" -> "Wow there are under-served market needs here" -> "I have some relevant experience to start a company that addresses it and can…

Amazon.com counterexample - Jeff Bezos was a VC before he started a bookstore.

Re: Actionable Ways To Get Startup Ideas

#12

Post by amirmc »

ruang wrote: post #11
digitailor wrote: post #5

I've never met a successful entrepreneur who sits around trying to come up with business ideas. At the risk of sounding negative and grumpy, groan. Another one of these blogadoodoos. What follows is my $.02, some might disagree. From what I've seen it goes "I have experience in this area" -> "Wow there are under-served market needs here" -> "I have some relevant experience to start a company that addresses it and can…

Amazon.com counterexample - Jeff Bezos was a VC before he started a bookstore.

Bezos worked in finance (hedge fund) before starting Amazon. He was not a VC.

Re: Actionable Ways To Get Startup Ideas

#13

Post by trevoro »

You don't ever seem to find startup ideas. Startup ideas seem to find you. That's why it's important to always be listening - if you listen often enough then problems will "appear out of nowhere" and you'll be in a good place to understand their potential.

Re: Actionable Ways To Get Startup Ideas

#14

Post by digitailor »

amirmc wrote: post #12
ruang wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon.com counterexample - Jeff Bezos was a VC before he started a bookstore.

Bezos worked in finance (hedge fund) before starting Amazon. He was not a VC.

Exactly- that can be seen as CFO qualifications, a background that I think primed him for Amazon well. Amazon is a CFO-type idea- small margins, obscene volume, financially micromanage the infrastructure.

To call Amazon a bookseller is missing their entire raison d'etre. Bezos wanted to be King of Volume, and how much of their current revenue is books? Can you imagine Barnes and Noble starting BNWS?

As a hedge funder he'd be looking for secure, smaller returns through diversification. Sound anything like Amazon's business plan?

Re: Actionable Ways To Get Startup Ideas

#15

Post by philtar »

digitailor wrote: post #5

I've never met a successful entrepreneur who sits around trying to come up with business ideas. At the risk of sounding negative and grumpy, groan. Another one of these blogadoodoos. What follows is my $.02, some might disagree. From what I've seen it goes "I have experience in this area" -> "Wow there are under-served market needs here" -> "I have some relevant experience to start a company that addresses it and can…

SoftBank counterexample - CEO wrote down a business idea every day for a year and then worked on his best one.

Re: Actionable Ways To Get Startup Ideas

#16

Post by Omnipresent »

digitailor wrote: post #5

I've never met a successful entrepreneur who sits around trying to come up with business ideas. At the risk of sounding negative and grumpy, groan. Another one of these blogadoodoos. What follows is my $.02, some might disagree. From what I've seen it goes "I have experience in this area" -> "Wow there are under-served market needs here" -> "I have some relevant experience to start a company that addresses it and can…

Pinterest founders are a counterexample of this as well

Re: Actionable Ways To Get Startup Ideas

#17

Post by kyro »

digitailor wrote: post #5

I've never met a successful entrepreneur who sits around trying to come up with business ideas. At the risk of sounding negative and grumpy, groan. Another one of these blogadoodoos. What follows is my $.02, some might disagree. From what I've seen it goes "I have experience in this area" -> "Wow there are under-served market needs here" -> "I have some relevant experience to start a company that addresses it and can…

I agree for a few select industries like healthcare and finance, but explain Square, Airbnb, Pinterest, Uber.

Re: Actionable Ways To Get Startup Ideas

#18

Post by enraged_camel »

digitailor wrote: post #5

I've never met a successful entrepreneur who sits around trying to come up with business ideas. At the risk of sounding negative and grumpy, groan. Another one of these blogadoodoos. What follows is my $.02, some might disagree. From what I've seen it goes "I have experience in this area" -> "Wow there are under-served market needs here" -> "I have some relevant experience to start a company that addresses it and can…

>>Not "I'm a wannabe entrepreneur" -> "I have no domain specific expert knowledge" -> "let's randomly find something we guess people care about and overspecialize" -> start coding blindly or find a Rails dev on Odesk. Seen that one fail innumerable times.

What kind of domain specific expertise did Mark Zuckerberg have when he wrote Facemash (Facebook's predecessor)?

The answer is "none." It was a pure hobby project - he didn't even plan on monetizing it. Yet here we are.

Re: Actionable Ways To Get Startup Ideas

#19

Post by tagawa »

enraged_camel wrote: post #18
digitailor wrote: post #5

I've never met a successful entrepreneur who sits around trying to come up with business ideas. At the risk of sounding negative and grumpy, groan. Another one of these blogadoodoos. What follows is my $.02, some might disagree. From what I've seen it goes "I have experience in this area" -> "Wow there are under-served market needs here" -> "I have some relevant experience to start a company that addresses it and can…

>>Not "I'm a wannabe entrepreneur" -> "I have no domain specific expert knowledge" -> "let's randomly find something we guess people care about and overspecialize" -> start coding blindly or find a Rails dev on Odesk. Seen that one fail innumerable times. What kind of domain specific expertise did Mark Zuckerberg have when he wrote Facemash (Facebook's predecessor)? The answer is "none." It was a pure hobby project -…

I don't really agree with your domain knowledge point - he was a college kid and it was aimed at college kids.

Re: Actionable Ways To Get Startup Ideas

#20

Post by dsl »

amirmc wrote: post #12
ruang wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon.com counterexample - Jeff Bezos was a VC before he started a bookstore.

Bezos worked in finance (hedge fund) before starting Amazon. He was not a VC.

The brilliant part is Amazon doesn't make money directly by selling books, they make money by not paying for books until they are all sold (so publishers are effectively floating them interest free loans for every new title).

A perfect example of finance domain knowledge.

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