Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Get Startup Ideas

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 239 posts

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#41

Post by flipside »

btilly wrote: post #38
javajosh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have four questions I'd like to ask you about your startup: 1. Does it help people address their fears? For example, are they afraid of not being heard? Or missing the next great movie? 2. Does it help people feel loved? For example, giving them an opportunity to warn people away from bad movies, or to offer unique insights? 3. Does it help people create or curate beauty? Movie ratings themselves are not very beaut…

You can boil it down a lot more than that. And not necessarily to such noble criteria. http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html famously boils it down to one question: Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?

Hypothetically speaking, the odds of getting laid after seeing a movie with a date probably go up if both people liked the movie.

Not exactly how we'd track it but the number of people that get laid after using our system would be a fascinating statistic.

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#42

Post by Xcelerate »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #31

Getting advice from an essay by PG is like reading a description of a stock market strategy - by the time you read and assimilate it, everyone else has too, and that particular inefficiency has been eliminated. There will now be a lot more HN readers keeping diaries of all the things that they noticed were inefficient in their day, and they will come up with good, competing startup ideas. However, the founder that is…

It's not necessarily a new idea. In fact, I posted a note to myself on Facebook in August that reads "Try hard to recognize problems; then come up with the solution." (Yeah, it's weird to post notes to yourself on FB but I actually see my notes on a daily basis and nobody else does since they're on 'only me').

The thing is, most people will read this essay and go "Yeah, yeah! That's great. I'm going to do that" and then forget about it by next Sunday. So I don't think you need to worry too much.

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#43

Post by tchock23 »

kyro wrote: post #11

One thing I've noticed that has generated a ton of ideas, particularly within the hospital setting I'm in, is to listen to all the questions staff members ask one another. Who's doing that? When's this happening? How do I do that? etc. They're all seemingly mundane questions that get asked on a daily basis, but they give you great insight to the daily frustrations that people have come to accept (that's why they're b…

I completely agree with you and have come across the same finding, but from an entirely different perspective...

Short of scratching your own itch, a great way to come up with startup ideas is through careful observation of others, and particularly those who could be defined as a "market" of sorts (e.g., those in a hospital setting, business, etc.). Observing behaviors and the language people use when they are trying to accomplish a task is an amazing way of developing new ideas, which can easily lead to new startup ideas.

I've been in qualitative market research for about 10 years now and by far the most effective studies I have run for my clients has been through observational and ethnographic research methods where we just follow along as people try to perform a task. This is the best way to uncover unmet needs and ideas for new products.

If you're stuck for a startup idea, just ask someone in an industry you're personally interested in if you can watch them do their job for a day. Just sit there and observe - ask questions only at the end.

If you really watch carefully, that will produce more ideas than you know how to handle (although I still agree with pg's original point - solving your own problems is the best way to go because you'll be more likely to stick with it through the inevitable ups and downs of startup life).

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#44

Post by Alex3917 »

carbocation wrote: post #32
kyro wrote: post #11

One thing I've noticed that has generated a ton of ideas, particularly within the hospital setting I'm in, is to listen to all the questions staff members ask one another. Who's doing that? When's this happening? How do I do that? etc. They're all seemingly mundane questions that get asked on a daily basis, but they give you great insight to the daily frustrations that people have come to accept (that's why they're b…

> As an example: in a hospital, we have the "sign out sheet" which is a list of the current patients and all of their important data. This. Seriously, the Institute of Medicine has implicitly decided that this is the problem that it wants the world's entrepreneurs to solve. The IOM observed that there were many errors made in medicine. Errors in medicine harm and kill people. Many people believe that doctors (residen…

For what it's worth, here is a reading list that I think does a pretty good job providing the context needed to understand most of the problems in US health/medicine right now:

http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus11.pdf - Health, United States, 2011

http://wps.pearsoneducation.nl/wps/media/objects/13902/14236... - To Err Is Human

- http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=192842 - JAMA: Institute of Medicine Medical Error Figures Are Not Exaggerated (Context for To Err Is Human)

- http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=192908#RE... - JAMA: Is US Health Really the Best in the World? (More context for To Err Is Human)

http://www.innovationlabs.com/summit/summit3/readings/Schust... - How good is the quality of health care in the United States?

http://www.commonwealthfund.org/~/media/Files/Publications/F... - Why Not The Best (Commonwealth Fund)

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309091179 - Health Literacy: A Prescription To End Confusion (IOM)

http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=6121 - IOM Workshop: Antiomicrobrial Resistance - Issues and Options

Books:

Anatomy of an Epidemic (Mental health)

The Emperor's New Drugs (Mental health)

Crazy Like Us (Mental health)

The Truth About Drug Companies (Pharma)

Overdosed America (Pharma)

Health Behavior Change and Treatment Adherence: Evidence-based Guidelines for Improving Healthcare (Medical adherence)

This list doesn't do a great job of covering certain niche problems like current issues in drug discovery or electronic records, but I think it provides enough context to understand whatever issues aren't covered directly. One of the quirks about medicine is that a lot of the data we have on even the most important issues (e.g. antibiotic resistance) is either 10+ years old or else woefully incomplete, which is extremely unfortunate but on the plus side it makes it actually fairly easy to learn about what would otherwise be way too complicated for anyone not in the industry to understand.

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#45

Post by pg »

YuriNiyazov wrote: post #31

Getting advice from an essay by PG is like reading a description of a stock market strategy - by the time you read and assimilate it, everyone else has too, and that particular inefficiency has been eliminated. There will now be a lot more HN readers keeping diaries of all the things that they noticed were inefficient in their day, and they will come up with good, competing startup ideas. However, the founder that is…

Except unlike stock market investing, startups are not a zero sum game.

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#46

Post by groby_b »

[16] is a rather cynical view of women in sororities. Maybe it's actually true for American colleges - I have no experience there. I doubt it is.

At it's core, it seems to be saying "Ask women what they need, then build it for them". Start with that attitude, and women will have no interest in your product - because you begin by assuming they're incapable of building the things they need themselves.

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#48

Post by ryan »

I love the concept of living in the future. I recently read the biography of Dan Raymer, a well-known aerospace designer, which was appropriately titled 'Living in the Future'[1]. This is because for most of his career he had been working on secret aircraft designs that the rest of the worldn't see for 20 years. Truly living in the future.

There's also the excellent quote attributed to William Gibson[2] "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed". That's probably the biggest reason I live in silicon valley - there is a disproportionate amount of 'future' distributed here.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Living-Future-Education-Adventures-Adv... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#49

Post by selvan »

Generate ideas to solve a problem. If you have 'n' ideas to solve a problem, it is n x 1 complexity.

Issue with using ideas as your problem is that you have to find actual problem first, then solution next. 'm' ideas as your problem and another 'n' ideas for each problem, it is m x n complexity.

Use lean principles to find a solution to a problem that you understood well.

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#50

Post by hiddenstage »

pg wrote: post #45
YuriNiyazov wrote: post #31

Getting advice from an essay by PG is like reading a description of a stock market strategy - by the time you read and assimilate it, everyone else has too, and that particular inefficiency has been eliminated. There will now be a lot more HN readers keeping diaries of all the things that they noticed were inefficient in their day, and they will come up with good, competing startup ideas. However, the founder that is…

Except unlike stock market investing, startups are not a zero sum game.

Stock market investing isn't a zero sum game anymore than VC investing or even Y Combinator.

Edit: OK, YC adds much more hands on value to businesses, but the investment aspect is exactly the same as it would be if you bought shares over the market.

Post reply on HN