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Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

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Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#491

Post by perilunar »

sound_and_form wrote: post #396

Make this. Somebody make this. Maybe it's not the obnoxious, catch-phrasey SaaS bulls*t you wanted to do, but it will change the world and you can be proud that you made it. There are millions of blind people in the world. They shuffle around with rudimentary technology. Literally sticks. But they still have ears. Synesthesia. Process the visual 3D world with a camera. Use head tracking. Convert it into an immersive…

Wouldn't that interfere with echolocation? Most of us do it at a rudimentary level [1], but some people have become quite proficient at it [2].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation

2. https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_kish_how_i_use_sonar_to_nav...

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#493

Post by [deleted] »

a13n wrote: post #474
nnq wrote: post #439

STOP. Just go work for someone else, please! Pretty please! Find someone with vision, and work for/with him/her instead. Or merge as equal partners. You sound like really competent people, but working under people without their own vision and without their own ideas is a wrist slashing inducing experience... The people with the ideas/vision should be in charge, not ever the other way around! If you're execution peopl…

I can't agree. Sure, founders need to have vision, but they also need to be "execution people". You think they should just raise money and outsource all the hard work to their reports? Gross.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#494

Post by [deleted] »

Jean-Philipe wrote: post #447
nnq wrote: post #439

STOP. Just go work for someone else, please! Pretty please! Find someone with vision, and work for/with him/her instead. Or merge as equal partners. You sound like really competent people, but working under people without their own vision and without their own ideas is a wrist slashing inducing experience... The people with the ideas/vision should be in charge, not ever the other way around! If you're execution peopl…

I so disagree. I've met so many "people with vision" who were far off with reality and ultimately failed miserably. Most successful startups I know, including my own, have pivoted - i.e. they had the wrong vision to begin with and figured out something else along the way. The team was what made them succeed.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#495

Post by pspi »

I had this exact problem - I wanted to know how to find problems. I'd tried Customer Development and concluded that interviewing potential customers is not the way to go. People don't walk around with lists of their biggest pains and interviews become easily biased.

I got then introduced to Amy Hoy's Sales Safari technique where instead of interviewing people you observe them. You find out where your audience hangs out online and listen what they talk about. After you do this enough you start to see patterns. And these patterns are the raw material for figuring out problems to solve. I highly recommend Amy's 30x500 course.

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#496

Post by SnacksOnAPlane »

So here's a nice idea I had that I don't have time to implement:

A specialized debate forum. Basically, two people decide to debate on an issue. They are the featured debaters. They write positions and submit them, and then they try to knock down the other person's positions.

Watchers can comment on specific points they make, annotating them and giving points for them. I imagine a system kind of like RapGenius.

Eventually, in the best case, the best arguments float to the top, and the more common arguments will have a home on the net where people can point to them instead of rehashing them over and over again. Leading to more intelligent discourse and a perfect society.

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#498

Post by Rainymood »

0xbear wrote: post #406
Frondo wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's mine: fix income inequality and the staggering inequality in the distribution of wealth worldwide. How is that a startup? I dunno, maybe there's a small part of that big problem that you can start tackling. Maybe it has to do with some facet of the economy you're improving/making more efficient, maybe it has to do with influencing policy. That's for you to figure out. Find a big, big problem, and then look for…

People who start companies are typically looking to increase “wealth inequality”.

Think of it more as like a negative externality.

People that use a car are not "typically looking to increase the rate of global warming and actively pollute the environment".

Using a car is a means of getting from place A to B, in the process however, you create a negative externality (i.e. pollute the environment).

When you create a startup you generally want to solve a very specific problem X at a grand scale, when you are able to do this while making some profit/growing in value you inevitably contribute to "inequality" as an externality.

Re: Ask HN: We have a great team and capital but can't find a good idea

#499

Post by jamesq »

We picked up ideas from our clients. If you've got a niche or area of experience - offer consultancy services or pick up some projects and dig into the pain points of your customers.

See where they're having problems and then do the research to see if it's a problem for others in the same industry. If it is you have your idea and probably your first couple of customers.

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