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

91–100 of 239 posts

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#91

Post by flipside »

byoung2 wrote: post #58
flipside wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the questions. 1. A big reason more people don't rate movies is because it's unclear how or if it actually helps others (my vote doesn't matter syndrome) or themselves (black box recommendations). 2. Validation is a big motivator, seeing that others agree with you or trust your judgement is huge. 3. Funny you should mention curating beauty, individuals will be able to share and discover based on people tha…

I'm an avid moviegoer (50+ theatrical releases a year) and I completely ignore movie reviews (and it's getting this way with Yelp reviews too) because they lack context. What I mean by this is that a thumbs up/down or star rating is useless unless I have some background on the person giving the rating. For example, for someone to give Prometheus 2 stars when they haven't seen any of the Alien movies is different from…

Context is definitely missing from most systems and it's one of our key differentiators. Our goal is to handle all those contextual details so you don't have to.

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#92

Post by vadimoss »

An online Art Gallery in 1995 is not a bad but rather a premature idea for that epoche. It's a norm for the Art to be a decade or so behind the technology world. No wonder Google launched this idea with Google Art Project in 2011, which is more appropriate as far as timing concerned. How about the lost art gallery? http://galleryoflostart.com @PG - you are just ahead of the crowd. Timing and luck are two ingredients of the same origin. Good timing is essentially luck:) On the other hand hard working is a guarantee of success if the "good timing" component presents.

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#93

Post by flipside »

shadowsun7 wrote: post #69
flipside wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for the questions. 1. A big reason more people don't rate movies is because it's unclear how or if it actually helps others (my vote doesn't matter syndrome) or themselves (black box recommendations). 2. Validation is a big motivator, seeing that others agree with you or trust your judgement is huge. 3. Funny you should mention curating beauty, individuals will be able to share and discover based on people tha…

Honestly, though, this idea seems to fall squarely into the 'yeah, I could see myself using that. Maybe' category. This isn't a huge pain point.

If you take another look at my original post, my point was that I still can't articulate why this is such a huge pain. If it helps to put it in perspective, I abandoned a Nanoengineering phd doing promising work in medical diagnostics because our rating system solves an incredibly painful problem for me and I'm convinced it's a more important contribution to the world.

To make a (hopefully apt) comparison, what pain point did twitter initially solve? Sharing what you had for lunch?

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#94

Post by wololo »

astrofinch wrote: post #88
wololo wrote: post #54

technically, on social networks for pet owners: http://crunchbase.com/company/dogster (also did catster)

Not sure what to make of this: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=dogster

Hmm, it's virtually identical to http://google.com/trends/explore#q=myspace. Winner take all?

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#95

Post by aaronbrethorst »

novaleaf wrote: post #77

from the article, pg: "Whereas the activation energy required to switch to a new search engine is low. Which in turn is why search engines are so much better than enterprise software." is that last sentence a joke? if yes, i think it is too subtle, a lot of dry sponges would soak it up. if it's NOT a joke... ummmm... wtf?

The cost of switching from Google Search to Bing Search (or whatever) is typing in a different address in the address bar[1]. The cost of replacing your multi-million dollar CRM solution is, obviously, millions of dollars.

[1] ok, not really, but you get the idea.

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#96

Post by flipside »

jcampbell1 wrote: post #61
flipside wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading essays like this drives me crazy. No, it's not because pg is wrong or I disagree with anything he's saying, it's because everything resonates with my startup (Tinj.co, interactive movie ratings) but after 1000+ pitches I still can't succinctly articulate how I know this. I could probably make a checklist for the criteria of great startup ideas (seems like a toy: check, personal problem: check, inspiration fro…

This idea strikes me squarely in the category of "Yeah, maybe I could see using something like that."

Of course you do, otherwise I wouldn't be frustrated. =P

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#97

Post by ComputerGuru »

iamwil wrote: post #72
ComputerGuru wrote: post #70

I actually gave a TEDx talk on this topic, my conclusion (similar to PGs, but more succinctly summed up in 10 words) was any time you find yourself saying "this is stupid, there has to be a better way..." BINGO! you've got a startup topic. Just actually keep track of it, and you'll find it happens more often than you realize. The talk, should anyone actually want to listen to me talk for 20 minutes: http://youtu.be/b…

btw, Thomas Edison didn't invent the lightbulb. Lightbulbs were around. He improved on it. Actually, his lab assistants did most of the work. And speaking of necessity is the mother of all inventions, Thomas Edison's phonograph invention (again, it was his lab assistants) came before he applied it to a need. It took him a while to figure out to apply it to the music industry.

Thanks for listening. I debated using the TE example beforehand, I am ashamed to say that I gave that speech knowing he wasn't the real inventor. I needed to connect to my audience, this was in another country and TE is one of the few inventors on their knowing.

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#98

Post by flipside »

tomhoward wrote: post #60
flipside wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading essays like this drives me crazy. No, it's not because pg is wrong or I disagree with anything he's saying, it's because everything resonates with my startup (Tinj.co, interactive movie ratings) but after 1000+ pitches I still can't succinctly articulate how I know this. I could probably make a checklist for the criteria of great startup ideas (seems like a toy: check, personal problem: check, inspiration fro…

Fundraising & customer acquisition are like dating; logic doesn't get you very far. The points PG makes might be valuable in convincing yourself that it's a field worth pursuing, but for convincing people to give you their attention and their cash, you need a different approach, which will usually involve some combination of: stories , charisma , status , social proof , exclusivity , to name just the first that come…

You're right, convincing others is a whole different ball game. Since I clearly suck at it, I've done my best to suck a little less each time I try.

Here's hoping pg writes that essay next.

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#99

Post by emmett »

flipside wrote: post #23
paulsutter wrote: post #8

After 20 years of entrepreneurship, of struggles and successes, of spending man years of that time thinking about startup ideas, and having learned so many lessons the hard way, I can say the following: pg's essays are so true and correct that I could practically cry. If enough people read these essays (especially this and the recent "growth" essay), it could materially boost the economy.

Reading essays like this drives me crazy. No, it's not because pg is wrong or I disagree with anything he's saying, it's because everything resonates with my startup (Tinj.co, interactive movie ratings) but after 1000+ pitches I still can't succinctly articulate how I know this. I could probably make a checklist for the criteria of great startup ideas (seems like a toy: check, personal problem: check, inspiration fro…

Can you explain, in one sentence, what it is that you're building that's different from existing movie ratings sites?

Try this template: "it's like Rotten Tomatoes, except ..."

It's like Rotten Tomatoes, except you rate on 3 axes instead of just 1.

It's like Rotten Tomatoes, except you rate the movie by answering questions about what parts you liked.

It's like Rotten Tomatoes, except your ratings are automatically posted to Facebook.

What are you building? If you can't say in one sentence, I would suggest the problem is with your pitch rather than with the listeners.

Re: How to Get Startup Ideas

#100

Post by emmett »

hiddenstage wrote: post #20

Twitter was built so people would be able to blog via SMS. That was the idea; that was the problem they were setting out to solve. That's not what made them big. They inadvertently solved the need of microblogging. No need to maintain blogs; no need to write long posts. Just a simple, short way to keep people informed with what you are doing. But that's not what made them big either. What made them big is celebrities…

Twitter was obviously a great idea, but it wasn't an obviously great idea.

Just because no one (including the Twitter guys) could see the direction it would grow in doesn't mean that it wasn't a great place to start. In retrospect, clearly it was.

Post reply on HN