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Anyone can think of ideas. I'm sure we've all got entire documents with lists of ideas we never followed up on. The hard part is finding opportunities to crea

Anyone can think of ideas. I'm sure we've all got entire documents with lists of ideas we never followed up on. The hard part is finding opportunities to create value for others (making stuff people actually want). Generally speaking, people already have the stuff they want that they can have. Now, I'm sure Paul Graham would say people's desires are infinite and there's still many unmet needs and wants. For All the stuff they don't have but want: well, there are major barriers to entry for those business ideas (flying cars), the exception being those ideas that were just recently enabled by another innovation (a Rare treat indeed). I think we've had this conversation before.... And, as he said in another post: you've got to be at the forefront of any industry. Live in the future. Meaning, use the latest tools and gizmos of any particular industry in order to help understand where things are and get a feel for them.

murukesh_s 10y ago
Adding to that I would say it's a little bit luck with an eye for disruption. Look at slack. We thought people had all the stuff they wanted but slack came out of nowhere. We thought skype/sms/gtalk was good enough and came WhatsApp. And snapchat, now it might look like a neat idea, but imagine that couple of years back. There is always room for disruption. Few categories of products are almost like fashion. There is no additional value they are bringing to the table. And there is no logical reasoning or no proper prediction possible on what becomes the next big thing. Then there is this room for replicating similar succuccessful ideas in emerging markets. Hundreds of ideas waiting to be explored in hundreds of markets. Then the unexplored beast of enterprise software. Not the makrt of consumer products rebranded as 'for' enterprise but actual tools or services that improves existing ones, many of which are decades old. But you need to be deep inside the domain to disrupt here. And of course finally the innovative ones. Which are the hardest but perhaps the most publicised making an impression that startups are all about innovative ideas.
- Can_Not 10y ago
  > We thought skype/sms/gtalk was good enough Nooooo we didn't. Skype is garbage (on Linux and in general), sms is fast and unreliable and expensive (to the consumers) but effectively free (to the gate keepers), gtalk was cancelled in favor of hangouts, which has lots of room for improvement (both in general and for organizations). Snapchat and WhatsApp are priming for their big sell outs where they transform into some nightmarish shitware/spyware/adware. IRC is cool for underground hacking circles, but without a good GUI and reliable offline messages, IRC is dead on arrival if you need non-techies involved in a serious work environment. If anything, this market has been screaming and begging for disruption.
vasanthkay 10y ago
We can often misunderstood the value of ideas. Like you mentioned - many people have thought about flying cars, internet or space travel. That doesn't make us smart or a visionary. Ideas need to have a possible course of action. Everything else is just a wishlist or a desire.

murukesh_s 10y ago

Adding to that I would say it's a little bit luck with an eye for disruption. Look at slack. We thought people had all the stuff they wanted but slack came out of nowhere. We thought skype/sms/gtalk was good enough and came WhatsApp. And snapchat, now it might look like a neat idea, but imagine that couple of years back. There is always room for disruption. Few categories of products are almost like fashion. There is no additional value they are bringing to the table. And there is no logical reasoning or no proper prediction possible on what becomes the next big thing. Then there is this room for replicating similar succuccessful ideas in emerging markets. Hundreds of ideas waiting to be explored in hundreds of markets. Then the unexplored beast of enterprise software. Not the makrt of consumer products rebranded as 'for' enterprise but actual tools or services that improves existing ones, many of which are decades old. But you need to be deep inside the domain to disrupt here. And of course finally the innovative ones. Which are the hardest but perhaps the most publicised making an impression that startups are all about innovative ideas.

Can_Not 10y ago
> We thought skype/sms/gtalk was good enough Nooooo we didn't. Skype is garbage (on Linux and in general), sms is fast and unreliable and expensive (to the consumers) but effectively free (to the gate keepers), gtalk was cancelled in favor of hangouts, which has lots of room for improvement (both in general and for organizations). Snapchat and WhatsApp are priming for their big sell outs where they transform into some nightmarish shitware/spyware/adware. IRC is cool for underground hacking circles, but without a good GUI and reliable offline messages, IRC is dead on arrival if you need non-techies involved in a serious work environment. If anything, this market has been screaming and begging for disruption.

vasanthkay 10y ago

We can often misunderstood the value of ideas. Like you mentioned - many people have thought about flying cars, internet or space travel. That doesn't make us smart or a visionary. Ideas need to have a possible course of action. Everything else is just a wishlist or a desire.