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How to brainstorm great business ideas

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Re: How to brainstorm great business ideas

#51

Post by ak39 »

_Understated_ wrote: post #50
tappio wrote: post #48

There is an interesting bias going on here. I'm wondering how many people upvoting this text has actually built a business, or just want to believe that what was written here is true? Building a business is messy. Most ideas suck initially. Companies who got the problem right the first time are extremely rare. Just as rare as companies who succeeded with a crappy idea having great execution. The hero ingredient is lu…

> The hero ingredient is luck. This... 100% this! I've mentored and worked with dozens of entrepreneurs and small businesses over the last few years and I mention this to all of them but it's not a case of "if I wait around I'll get lucky". You still need to be active and work hard and fix the right problem with the right solution and then, if you get lucky, you'll succeed. I teach entrepreneurs to pitch and tell the…

>>I've mentored and worked with dozens of entrepreneurs and small businesses over the last few years and I mention this to all of them but it's not a case of "if I wait around I'll get lucky". You still need to be active and work hard and fix the right problem with the right solution and then, if you get lucky, you'll succeed.Basically "keep trying and working on whatever until you either get lucky, run out of money or give up hope". (Ultimate failure being the act of giving up and trying something totally different.)

Re: How to brainstorm great business ideas

#52

Post by polote »

_Understated_ wrote: post #50
tappio wrote: post #48

There is an interesting bias going on here. I'm wondering how many people upvoting this text has actually built a business, or just want to believe that what was written here is true? Building a business is messy. Most ideas suck initially. Companies who got the problem right the first time are extremely rare. Just as rare as companies who succeeded with a crappy idea having great execution. The hero ingredient is lu…

> The hero ingredient is luck. This... 100% this! I've mentored and worked with dozens of entrepreneurs and small businesses over the last few years and I mention this to all of them but it's not a case of "if I wait around I'll get lucky". You still need to be active and work hard and fix the right problem with the right solution and then, if you get lucky, you'll succeed. I teach entrepreneurs to pitch and tell the…

I do not really agree with that, how would you explain that founders that have succeed in the past are most likely to succeed again ?

And how do you explain that some people are just able to create several successful companies ?

Luck is not the best thing to create a company and actually it is almost never the case, luck doesn't last.

I'm not saying that we know exactly what works or we know how to transfer this knowledge to other people, but I'm convinced that luck is not the reason. Actually luck is often an explanation of someone's skills when we don't find rational explanations

Re: How to brainstorm great business ideas

#53

Post by tobr »

tappio wrote: post #48

There is an interesting bias going on here. I'm wondering how many people upvoting this text has actually built a business, or just want to believe that what was written here is true? Building a business is messy. Most ideas suck initially. Companies who got the problem right the first time are extremely rare. Just as rare as companies who succeeded with a crappy idea having great execution. The hero ingredient is lu…

So if luck is the most important ingredient, would it make sense to go for ideas where you can see a lot of very different opportunities? Because that seems to be slightly opposed to the “correct” approach of starting with understanding a problem, then look for a solution. If you do, your solution is going to be extremely tailored to one specific problem, and if that doesn’t work out, it will be hard to do anything else with it. This is what the lock and key metaphor describes: the key only fits one specific lock, and is useless for anything else.

On the other hand, if you start with the solution before the problem, you can make more of a lock picking set... your solution may fit a whole lot of different problems. To continue to stretch the metaphor, you can now manipulate luck simply be opening more doors.

Re: How to brainstorm great business ideas

#54

Post by CM30 »

gonehome wrote: post #13
samsquire wrote: post #12

I am a serial idea writer and I have to agree with the author. Ideas are inherently valuable, maybe not financially, but they're valuable to have and valuable to society to share. It makes me angry that people actually believe ideas are inherently worthless. Or that without any code or implementation they're worthless. It's a meme that needs to die. It's like having your cake and eating it too. Here's a free idea for…

I think the ideas being worthless meme is an over-correction of the person that thinks the idea is all of the value and wants to hire an engineer to 'just do the implementation' for little reward. Ideas have value, and someone who can unite people with a clear vision can do incredible things but the implementation is a big part of the actual difficulty and usually you have to update the idea as you learn more from th…

Yeah, this is the reason right here. There are thousands of people on internet forums, social media sites and subreddits who want to start projects with themselves as the 'idea man', assuming other people will join and do all the actual implementation work. You see it a lot in game design/development communities, where these people talk about how they'll make the next mega 3D MMORPG where you can go anywhere and do anything, and assume they can just come up with the ideas while their team does all the building work.

The idea might potentially be interesting in itself, but without the implementation it won't be all that useful.

Re: How to brainstorm great business ideas

#56

Post by ThomPete »

polote wrote: post #52
_Understated_ wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The hero ingredient is luck. This... 100% this! I've mentored and worked with dozens of entrepreneurs and small businesses over the last few years and I mention this to all of them but it's not a case of "if I wait around I'll get lucky". You still need to be active and work hard and fix the right problem with the right solution and then, if you get lucky, you'll succeed. I teach entrepreneurs to pitch and tell the…

I do not really agree with that, how would you explain that founders that have succeed in the past are most likely to succeed again ? And how do you explain that some people are just able to create several successful companies ? Luck is not the best thing to create a company and actually it is almost never the case, luck doesn't last. I'm not saying that we know exactly what works or we know how to transfer this know…

Because they benefit from the previous success which open more doors and make it easier to get press and clients.

Re: How to brainstorm great business ideas

#58

Post by throwaway98797 »

tappio wrote: post #48

There is an interesting bias going on here. I'm wondering how many people upvoting this text has actually built a business, or just want to believe that what was written here is true? Building a business is messy. Most ideas suck initially. Companies who got the problem right the first time are extremely rare. Just as rare as companies who succeeded with a crappy idea having great execution. The hero ingredient is lu…

Seems defeatist to over ascribe luck to success.

The only guarantee is if you don’t try you don’t succeed.

Re: How to brainstorm great business ideas

#59

Post by dreamer7 »

tappio wrote: post #48

There is an interesting bias going on here. I'm wondering how many people upvoting this text has actually built a business, or just want to believe that what was written here is true? Building a business is messy. Most ideas suck initially. Companies who got the problem right the first time are extremely rare. Just as rare as companies who succeeded with a crappy idea having great execution. The hero ingredient is lu…

Having worked on my startup for the past 2 years I can agree with this - > Building a business is messy

But luck is not the best way to succeed. Being systematic and knowing that any domain will have deficiencies that can be worked on will greatly increase the odds of success.

It is true that we will not hit upon a problem worth solving (in terms of scale, cost etc) on our first try. But the author's suggestion is to focus on iterating over the problem more than the solution, atleast initially.

Re: How to brainstorm great business ideas

#60

Post by michaelbrave »

samsquire wrote: post #12

I am a serial idea writer and I have to agree with the author. Ideas are inherently valuable, maybe not financially, but they're valuable to have and valuable to society to share. It makes me angry that people actually believe ideas are inherently worthless. Or that without any code or implementation they're worthless. It's a meme that needs to die. It's like having your cake and eating it too. Here's a free idea for…

"worthless" is too strong, but I meet so many people that overvalue them that my language has become more about devaluing ideas than valuing them.

Look I'm not going to sign an NDA for something with no work done on it yet. If you want to share an idea and enrich the world sure that's fine. But most of the time while executing an idea, changes have to be made, assumptions weren't quite right, edge cases show up, the world was more complex than expected.

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