How to brainstorm great business ideas

It's a good article I guess, but a bit over-optimistic about execution.

> You can build anything.

Not really, though. The article suggests that there are no constraints to what can be built, but there on constraints to what people want / need, how you'll make money, etc.

There are significant constraints around what can be built. They change over time, and in fact, finding ideas that were rejected for being too hard in the past can be a good indicator of something that could be built now.

And many great business ideas that solve huge problems with clear distribution channels can fail, because the solution that works isn't possible or feasible to build yet.

In a roundabout kind of way, if you find the solution first, its called learning and if your mindset is aligned to this article, its defined as research.

Though in a monkey see, monkey do world, there is no shortage of mimicked expertise and flattery, so plan accordingly.

Fantastic post. Lots of weight on the problem discovery area which is the right move and engineers turned entrepreneurs skip this step a lot. I know I did.

A book recommended by YC's Aaron Epstein is The Mom Test[0]. The first 50-60% of the book is dedicated to how to discover problems with end clients/users that are worth tackling.

I have used the techniques personally and it's great to see what users say is a huge problem vs a problem they're willing to pay for.

It is easy to get stuck in a self-fulfilling trap that a user complains is a big problem. I recently spoke with a customer:

- "What's your biggest problem?" (book says this question is a no no)

- He replies, "If I sell 3 cars at the same time, I'm out of available float (cash) while I wait for those deals to close. This is a HUGE problem for me!"

- "How do you solve this today?" I ask.

- "I have other, larger car sales company who will lend me money at XX rates."

Right there, it's a solved problem. The end user figured out their own way. Turns out other smaller dealers like him rely on large trade line companies.

The only way I could complete is either on lower cost of financing or speed. At which point, for me, it's not a problem worth solving. The problem isn't so big for him where he's willing to throw cash at me for it.

Talk to users.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-...

Seconding this. Mom test is an essential read. People will say positive things about your product in order to protect your feelings, and this can lead you along the wrong path. When you ask them to purchase though, the conversation becomes really clear.

I very much agree with this post in that analysis of the problem has to be the first step. There needs to be both a contextual and a granular appreciation of the problem.

You get far too many founders looking for the most intense problem when that is just one facet of a problem. Christmas songs are a problem, painful, intense, etc. But it's only once a year, which would mean not very active users.

As well as the Mom Test, off-the-top of my head, check out

1. Talking To Humans https://www.talkingtohumans.com/

2. Testing With Humans https://testingwithhumans.com/, both by Giff Constable.

There are some medical pain evaluation papers that I found highly informative, but I would need to go through my notes as I can't recollect them.

And if anybody is interested, I have a free tool you can download, that will aid you to assess your idea by breaking it apart into its elemental composition and looking deeper into the problem, the audience, and the market.

It's at MVP v2, so long way to go yet, and it is only for MS Access, so PC only: https://startizer.com/