How to pick startup ideas
defmacro.org
How to pick startup ideas
1–10 of 83 posts
Re: How to pick startup ideas
#2Interesting article - a lot of good stuff in it but I found it a bit to general to be really useful. As an example, the author states: "So you need to get to market with a viable product before anyone else does."
That's the type of statement that I question - there are plenty of examples of companies creating products in saturated markets where they were not the first mover. In fact, sometime being a first mover can be a disadvantage as you must, as a startup, spend huge amounts of time and money educating the market.
Now, the author's approach of "look at the trend, get in front of it" is great - but it's pretty rare that someone can do that. In startups, I've usually seen that luck plays a bigger role in it than anyone wants to admit - that is, you start a company, and you happen onto the right market wave at the right time.
Definitely bookmarking it!
Re: How to pick startup ideas
#3Really engaging post. Placed in the context of RethinkDB though it is a bit contradictory no? RethinkDB does not have first mover advantage and they are against the likes of Riak, Mongo, Couchbase, Cassandra, etc. All of those I believe are in a much stronger position according to the criteria in the post.
Re: How to pick startup ideas
#4Really engaging post. Placed in the context of RethinkDB though it is a bit contradictory no? RethinkDB does not have first mover advantage and they are against the likes of Riak, Mongo, Couchbase, Cassandra, etc. All of those I believe are in a much stronger position according to the criteria in the post.
RethinkDB won't be in this position for long (and in fact, most lessons in the article came directly from the mistakes made in the process of building RethinkDB).
We found a big point of a differentiation (http://rethinkdb.com/blog/realtime-web/), which, depending on one's definition, can be considered discovering a new market, and we'll be the first open-source scalable database in that market. The upcoming 2.0 release will reposition the company around realtime web/push database. A huge part of the reason why we chose this path is the lessons in the article.
Re: How to pick startup ideas
#5Really engaging post. Placed in the context of RethinkDB though it is a bit contradictory no? RethinkDB does not have first mover advantage and they are against the likes of Riak, Mongo, Couchbase, Cassandra, etc. All of those I believe are in a much stronger position according to the criteria in the post.
RethinkDB won't be in this position for long (and in fact, most lessons in the article came directly from the mistakes made in the process of building RethinkDB). We found a big point of a differentiation ( http://rethinkdb.com/blog/realtime-web/ ), which, depending on one's definition, can be considered discovering a new market, and we'll be the first open-source scalable database in that market. The upcoming 2.0 re…
I agree with you. RehinkDB does make a very compelling product for the stream based future.
Looking forward to more stuff from you guys. This is the best written article I've read in a long time on startup stuff.
Re: How to pick startup ideas
#6Really engaging post. Placed in the context of RethinkDB though it is a bit contradictory no? RethinkDB does not have first mover advantage and they are against the likes of Riak, Mongo, Couchbase, Cassandra, etc. All of those I believe are in a much stronger position according to the criteria in the post.
Many of Slava's past articles have been written from the POV of "bitter experience", i.e. he made all these mistakes in the past, he deals with the consequences every day, and this is what he's learned from them. That's part of what makes them so valuable. I recall pg responding to one of them with something to the effect of "If you're founding a startup and don't understand the points he's making now, you will probably be making the mistakes he details in a year."
Re: How to pick startup ideas
#7Interesting article - a lot of good stuff in it but I found it a bit to general to be really useful. As an example, the author states: "So you need to get to market with a viable product before anyone else does." That's the type of statement that I question - there are plenty of examples of companies creating products in saturated markets where they were not the first mover. In fact, sometime being a first mover can…
> there are plenty of examples of companies creating products in saturated markets where they were not the first mover
There is an "exceptions" section closer to the end of the post that discuss this, though it probably should have been longer.
The biggest issue with exceptions like this is that first-time founders often jump into a saturated market and think "we can do better -- look at all the counterexamples", but they end up losing the overwhelming majority of the time. You can jump into a saturated market, but you need a hypothesis as to why you're going to win (a distribution edge that existing competitors don't have, a new trend that existing competitors can't capitalize on, etc.) Especially in the latter case, one could make an argument that you will have discovered a new trend/market, though at that point it's a matter of definitions.
Re: How to pick startup ideas
#8This is excellent. Your intuition, thought process, and writing style remind me of PG's essays.
Re: How to pick startup ideas
#9I like this article. Much of the advice on startups is biased from an investor perspective, this is something that's very real from a founder's perspective.
If I had to summarize and riff off of the ideas here, I'd phrase it as "Be very careful about where you're getting your information from." If you got your startup idea because you heard about something from a news article, you are way too late. If you got it from an Internet forum, there's a chance that you might be on to something, but it depends on how niche the forum is and how close to the bleeding ege. If you got it from a problem that you or a friend personally had and you know how to solve it right now, you may be on to something, but you have to carefully consider how many other people are like your friend and whether that's going to grow in the future. If you're in a niche community yourself and that community is growing rapidly, there are probably lots of things you can explore that might be fruitful startup ideas.
Re: How to pick startup ideas
#10This article is built on top of many faulty assumptions...
Most notably,"When you’re second to market with a viable product, your customers will compare you to the company and product that got to market first."
This assumes that the entire market knows about a solution the moment a first mover comes to market.
The reality is that building a brand to the point where every prospect you approach is comparing you to an incumbent takes years.
The first couple years of a new market opportunity, even with dozens of competitors, there are enough prospects in the market that you can be first to market with the people you reach and your competitors will be first to market with a different segment of the market.
That being said, it is ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL for every company to differentiate themselves in a way that they can't be compared to a competitor.
There are some nuggets of wisdom sprinkled throughout this post, but It is clearly built on one subjective individuals perception of things that are beyond our control to really grasp. (i.e. the surface is successful because of a massive ad budget. I would argue the surface is a new category by itself.)