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How do you come up with your ideas for startups?
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Re: How do you come up with your ideas for startups?
#2I've found that the most effective way to come up with ideas is to spend some time alone writing down ideas, usually "aha!" moments that occur while I am doing something completely unrelated. Usually the idea scratches a personal itch I have. After that, I've found that bouncing the idea off of co-founders helps to assert (or reject) that it is a valid business opportunity. How about you guys? What methodology works best for you?
Re: How do you come up with your ideas for startups?
#3Whenever you run into a frustration in the world write it down. Then later when your trawling for ideas come back to that list and find a solution that will make the frustration go away.
Re: How do you come up with your ideas for startups?
#4Idea praxis:
There are many ways ...
- make things for yourself & solve your own problems
- take notes in notebook
- observe from nature
- don't be obstinate (in-flexible)
- revise your ideas & filter
- listen to your users
The thing is some ideas are crap. Others maybe ok. But it's what you do with the idea that matters. Turn the idea to a demo. Release the demo and see how many users pick it up. Re-visit your old ideas
It's how quickly you can turn idea to demo. Unleash your ideas in the form of a demo on your users. You'll find out quickly if they are crap or not.
Re: How do you come up with your ideas for startups?
#5Notice things that seem broken-- things that should be possible, but aren't (yet).
Re: How do you come up with your ideas for startups?
#6I still think the best source of inspiration is the government's list of 101 things to do besides having sex:
http://www.iamworththewait.org/101.html
It does a pretty good job at spanning the range of human activity.
Re: How do you come up with your ideas for startups?
#7Notice things that seem broken-- things that should be possible, but aren't (yet).
Or questions that shouldn't be answerable but aren't.
Also, mashing up two abstractions is a good way to narrow down the solution space you are interested in.
For example, IT combines information with technology. PT combines people with technology. CP combines communication with people. TT combines two technologies.
Each mashup has a different set of value propositions that work well with it. IT generally uses tech to manipulate information to answer a question or help people make sense of something. PT generally revolves around augmenting human ability. etc.
Re: How do you come up with your ideas for startups?
#8I pretend to be a VC, listen to people's pitches, and implement the best ones.
(It's a joke. Laugh.)
Re: How do you come up with your ideas for startups?
#9Notice things that seem broken-- things that should be possible, but aren't (yet).
A good place to start this is things you're personally dissatisfied with. Develop a healthy sense of annoyance with the things you use. Start to look for things thought you ought to find really annoying but don't because you've gotten used to them.
I've found it surprising how much this can be honed like any other skill. At first thinking up ideas seems difficult, then suddenly you've got a queue of things you want to build because you're annoyed. Then you go through the queue for things that other people are likely to be dissatisfied with as well.
Hopefully once you're at that point you're better equipped to spot broken stuff that you don't necessarily use (or even want to use). My guess is that not being put up their own online store was not a pain point for Paul and Robert but years of building whatever tools like lacked helped them spot it as a problem others were having.
Re: How do you come up with your ideas for startups?
#101) Scratch your own itch
2) Think of a way to replace existing products or services with web technology.
Good luck!