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Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas

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Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas

#31

Post by tptacek »

fleitz wrote: post #25

I fail to see why companies that make money would fail to satisfy an investor? Is there something about the YC model that makes companies that go on to turn modest profits not generate returns for the investor? A business like Wal-Mart wouldn't satisfy you as an investor? I wouldn't have any problems taking 8% of Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart didn't invent anything new, they just did it a little bit better than their competitor…

Walmart is a world-class innovator in supply chain management, retail engineering, shipping logistics, inventory tracking... the list just goes on and on.

Walmart is one of those things that is just so effective and so pervasive that we forget how important its original ideas are. It's like learning to like music in 2003 and hearing the Pixies for the first time and not getting it; you don't realize that virtually all of pop/rock music for the last 20 years is built on stuff they popularized.

But unlike the Pixies, Walmart has ruthlessly refined and improved their systems instead of breaking up the band with a faxed message from Black Francis.

Point being: innovation isn't always easy to spot in a simple paragraph on a message board.

Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas

#32

Post by monsterix »

Well everybody has an opinion, and a choice to tread on a path that feels "right". For a moment you might think these ideas are unambitious, but when you dig-deep you'll discover a lot of gems underneath. One wouldn't expect a frightening execution, speak or quality within six months of a startup.

That's probably a picture only big daddies like Apple can show to the world. For example on another thread you can already see DuckDuckGo revealing their ambitious face after a perceivable unambitious journey of two years!

Also another thing that probably we all miss is that the next big thing might not necessarily be anything from the ones ever listed - ambitious or unambitious. None of the big names like Facebook or Google or Apple were frighteningly ambitious ideas to the world until they kicked butts of everyone.

On second part: Suggestions on choosing a worthwhile domain name is really nice, but looking at how much has been squatted out there, there doesn't seem much of a choice or harm with the current trend of choosing twin word names.

There are fewer cheap options at disposal of entrepreneurs and so it is for the rest of the world.

Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas

#33

Post by samstave »

The reason why I think that it is difficult to say a frighteningly ambitious startup idea is actually something that is expected to come through YC, is that the funding that YC provides is miniscule, and will cover hardly an annual salary for a single, accomplished person who has a lot of domain knowledge in a field they may want to disrupt.

As someone in the medical space who is 37, married with 2 kids - My salary is more than the funding of YC - and I would not be able to take ~150K and divide it among multiple founders -- let alone have that funding cover, you know, actual startup expenses.

I feel I am in this catch-22 limbo area -- too old and too ambitious of an idea to fit the YC mold.

Personally, I see YC as being fairly myopic in the type of people they fund, and it is frustrating because I think YC is incredible!

Sure, there are tons of opportunities for nifty apps that serve a silo of a need (even if that silo is infinitely deep) -- but the idea I have to revolutionize the hospital space can't feasibly be built on 150K - unless I take that funding whilst retaining my full time job to pay for me and have that 150K go directly to the product.

Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas

#34

Post by mikk0j »

Detrus wrote: post #8

Paul Graham said don't attack the problem head on. Make a beachhead. Supposedly these seemingly dull ideas are beachheads. That was covered in a previous HN discussion about a similar article questioning YC startup ideas in practice. But something like Dropbox seems to have a hard time scaling out, exploring other ideas, and that's with a founder who wants to build a big company like Apple. Even if you start with a b…

This beachhead thinking is key. The trouble is that it is harder to represent in the “we’re X for Y” way, which is usually the thing that sticks with the audience (which is also the reason why it works so well).

Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas

#35

Post by Estragon »

alain94040 wrote: post #28

Even Twitter wouldn't sound ambitious if you say "we are group SMS for the world". To better understand how ambitious a startup is, assume that its adoption is 100%. If everyone is using it, does it change lives? If everyone chats on Twitter, does it impact politics? If everyone is on Facebook, do you reconnect with old friends? Etc. Dropbox is in that category too. With used cars purchases, I can see how everyone wo…

What is the best-case endgame for dropbox? I like it, but I don't understand why everyone's so excited about its potential.

Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas

#36

Post by iamwil »

Ideas change. Apple didn't start with iPhone or iPad. They started with the Apple I, which was just a circuit board. Microsoft didn't start with Windows 7. They started with BASIC for the Altair. Paypal didn't start with online payments. They started as money transfer between PDAs.

As for the criticism about "X for Y", the problem is not with them, but with the rest of us. Most people (smart or not) have a hard time grasping completely original ideas, and they don't have the time to dive deep into it. "X for Y" is simply a low bandwidth way of transferring a core idea. It's the MVP of communicating your vision. If you have to take more than a sentence to convey your idea/startup, you're going to have a hard hard uphill battle. But chances are, you don't have a clear understanding of what problem you're solving.

Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas

#37

Post by anateus »

mhartl wrote: post #14

Those who disparage "X for Y" descriptions misunderstand their use. When you have only a few minutes (or seconds) to pitch your idea, being X for Y or the X of Y is an effective way to give people the gist and pique their interest. Only then does it make sense to go into more detail and explain the full scope of your ambitions.

Exactly. Only a minority of companies that use those pitches used the same phrasing in their initial creation process. The goal is to solve a problem someone has, the "X for Y" is a shorthand for "don't take my word for it that people have this kind of problem, look at this very similar situation".

Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas

#38

Post by mikk0j »

The “we’re X for Y” is awesome because it is a simple, powerful positioning. That's also why it can be misunderstood so easily.

The same model is used in pitching screenplays and movies. Alien, famously, was pitched as "Jaws in space". It works because it sticks, but doesn't define the field (the plot etc) too much. Similarly, startups using the “we’re X for Y” are giving themselves a quick mental positioning in the mind of the listener, but without carving an exact niche. It is easier to work up or broaden from defining the idea ('the beachhead') that way.

The way to misunderstand it is think that they mean to do exactly that. "What, they're taking a giant shark onto a spaceship?"

Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas

#39

Post by pyoung »

samstave wrote: post #33

The reason why I think that it is difficult to say a frighteningly ambitious startup idea is actually something that is expected to come through YC, is that the funding that YC provides is miniscule, and will cover hardly an annual salary for a single, accomplished person who has a lot of domain knowledge in a field they may want to disrupt. As someone in the medical space who is 37, married with 2 kids - My salary i…

From what I recall, only one founder is required to attend YC. So you could theoretically find a younger founder who could attend, while you kept at your full-time job.

Re: Frighteningly Unambitious Startup Ideas

#40

Post by mhartl »

samstave wrote: post #33

The reason why I think that it is difficult to say a frighteningly ambitious startup idea is actually something that is expected to come through YC, is that the funding that YC provides is miniscule, and will cover hardly an annual salary for a single, accomplished person who has a lot of domain knowledge in a field they may want to disrupt. As someone in the medical space who is 37, married with 2 kids - My salary i…

Many entrepreneurs dip into personal savings in the initial startup phase. This can be stressful, which is one reason I focused on creating a passive income stream after my own YC startup shut down. So, I'd recommend either accumulating a nest egg or creating a passive income stream (or both) before rolling the dice on a startup.
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