1. I think your problem is relatively detached from the "should I join a company" question. Good ideas take time and are brewed in your brain after you've seen

1. I think your problem is relatively detached from the "should I join a company" question. Good ideas take time and are brewed in your brain after you've seen a problem enough. SolarCity's founders (Elon Musks cousins) first were told about solar's potential 2 years before they came up with the idea for SolarCity and their innovative financing model -- they went out and did a ton of research on the market, interviewed experts, and went to conferences before they saw that "no one was owning the problem that people couldn't afford solar." So they chose that as their "idea". Basically, if you want to come up with an idea, go find problems you think are injustices in the world and go off and learn as much as you can, both online and in the real world. Why do those problems exist? Is it a technical problem, social problem, etc? As you go for a root cause analysis, you'll naturally end up coming up with solutions. 2. Sometimes it's simply hard to get a high-level view of the tech industry and the markets that interplay. There are tons of cool startups. I recently wrote a blog post that you might like, where my company lists 75 of the most exciting startups, segmented by problem space: https://jobstart.com/guides/top-startup-picks-explore-the-markets https://jobstart.com/guides/top-startup-picks-explore-the-ma... Hope this all helps, and good luck!