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I have always found that entire scenario very odd. How are you a start up founder if you don’t know what you want to start up? I always look at that like a sol

I have always found that entire scenario very odd. How are you a start up founder if you don’t know what you want to start up? I always look at that like a soldier jacked up on adrenaline wearing an arsenal of ammunition ready to destroy the enemy having forgotten to ask who the enemy is or where they are. Lost. Maybe if they just start spraying ammo at everybody the enemy will suddenly make themselves known and something will stick. This entire scenario is completely at odds with Indie Hackers who continually stress to refine a good idea until you have both revenue and product/market fit before quitting your day job. This advise is well suited to people who have the reality of personal finances and time constraints, so I guess there are some people who have unlimited funding and time to burn in search of something they should already have.

aklemm 6y ago
It’s a form of entitlement. Similar to calling oneself a “keynote speaker” absent any mention of one’s area of expertise. To consider one’s self a founder without an idea is to ignore the importance of vision. Might be ok for a franchise, but these are always the same people talking about disrupting this and that.
- elliekelly 6y ago
  And ignores the importance of execution altogether. It’s hard to do $thing before you even know what it is.
peterwoerner 6y ago
I knew I wanted to build my own company before I had a good idea for one. When I was in grad school I went out and executed a themed bottle opener which at best guess could make a few thousand dollars simply for practice and experience. Regardless of whether you are a founder or not, figuring out the important problems to solve is important to ones career.
benjaminsuch 6y ago
Agree. I think it's a very bad sign if someone asks for ideas. You don't ask for ideas, you encounter problems and based on those problems you make ideas on how to solve them. That's also the reason why one should make a prototype very fast and validate by a potential user/customer that you solve the problem the right way.
kgin 6y ago
That's a funny cultural thing about silicon valley. You're not incidentally an entrepreneur only if you've started something, you're an entrepreneur simply because you're the type of person who entrepreneues.
renewiltord 6y ago
I am sceptical too but it's not an unusual idea to think that perhaps you can just put smart people together and they'll work something out. God knows that much of that attitude is often lauded on HN for other things.
- austincheney 6y ago
  Kind of. I am entering my fifth military deployment so I can speak to the nature of spontaneously formed teams of strangers. Intelligence is largely, but not completely, irrelevant. You learn to identify that a team is strongest due to a mix of good discipline and putting the proper personalities in the correct positions and then codifying a single common purpose. I recommend reading the book Good To Great for further examination.
- AtHeartEngineer 6y ago
  Agreed, I work in an environment with a lot of really smart people, but not everyone thinks outside the box or is ambitious in that way
dunkelheit 6y ago
The problem with this way of thinking is that existing markets are probably efficient enough - meaning all easy ways to make a lot of money have already been exhausted. This means that any idea that you generate by encountering a problem and thinking of a solution is probably either too hard to implement or will generate relatively puny revenue stream (nothing to sneeze at, but probably not of much interest to VCs and founders chasing big bucks). What's the alternative? To wait for tectonic shifts in overall environment and circumstances, look for vacant ecological niches and pounce when you see one. To the outside view this will look exactly like a founder who doesn't know what to start up. Here is an example I like: John Carmack. The conventional view is that he is a brilliant game programmer (which is undoubtedly true). But the alternative point of view is that his shtick was to capitalize on the period of incredible advances in consumer hardware. Each of his games fully showcased what the best hardware of that time was capable of (order of magnitude more than the previous generation) which made them instant hits. Not coincidentally, he quit making games around the time this period of advancement stopped. Here is a post by @defmacro making a similar point: http://www.defmacro.org/2015/02/25/startup-ideas.html http://www.defmacro.org/2015/02/25/startup-ideas.html
- austincheney 6y ago
  John Carmack's success is due to id Software incubated at Softdisk. The reality of that success, at least in the beginning, was an already established stream of revenue, a ready assembled team, and proper leadership. The brilliance and innovation of Carmack came later. They had day jobs, revenue, and product/market fit already established before spinning out of Softdisk to launch id. That isn't enough to account for the super stellar success they would later enjoy, but it fully explains launching a successful business. There isn't any magic or secret sauce there. > The problem with this way of thinking is that existing markets are probably efficient enough Oh, that's certainly not true. The challenge there is the expertise to see the current dysfunction versus the risk of solving for it. Solving for the dysfunction often comes at competition for the limited resources required for current practice of art and rejection from just about everybody. Knowing this there is a choice to be made: 1. Sustain the current practice with current income and no change in risk 2. Proceed with the solution knowing that failure is probable and that a startup begins with a financial valley of death (burns cash without the revenue to make up for it) while knowing the greatness of the idea is financially irrelevant. I say the greatness of the idea is financially irrelevant, because disruption requires some degree of originality and originality scares the shit out of people. That means the idea will burn money churning in frequent rejection until it achieves some manner of market assistance.
the_reformation 6y ago
> Stay away from people who are world-weary and belittle your ambitions.
LockAndLol 6y ago
> I always look at that like a soldier jacked up on adrenaline wearing an arsenal of ammunition ready to destroy the enemy having forgotten to ask who the enemy is or where they are. Lost. Maybe if they just start spraying ammo at everybody the enemy will suddenly make themselves known and something will stick. That is about the most American way of putting it. It also describes America in the middle East and lots of Africa. Weapons had to be sold and/or money had to be made. So people were attacked and when people started shooting back, suddenly there was a reason to invade.

aklemm 6y ago

It’s a form of entitlement. Similar to calling oneself a “keynote speaker” absent any mention of one’s area of expertise. To consider one’s self a founder without an idea is to ignore the importance of vision. Might be ok for a franchise, but these are always the same people talking about disrupting this and that.

elliekelly 6y ago
And ignores the importance of execution altogether. It’s hard to do $thing before you even know what it is.

peterwoerner 6y ago

I knew I wanted to build my own company before I had a good idea for one. When I was in grad school I went out and executed a themed bottle opener which at best guess could make a few thousand dollars simply for practice and experience. Regardless of whether you are a founder or not, figuring out the important problems to solve is important to ones career.

benjaminsuch 6y ago

Agree. I think it's a very bad sign if someone asks for ideas. You don't ask for ideas, you encounter problems and based on those problems you make ideas on how to solve them. That's also the reason why one should make a prototype very fast and validate by a potential user/customer that you solve the problem the right way.

kgin 6y ago

That's a funny cultural thing about silicon valley. You're not incidentally an entrepreneur only if you've started something, you're an entrepreneur simply because you're the type of person who entrepreneues.

renewiltord 6y ago

I am sceptical too but it's not an unusual idea to think that perhaps you can just put smart people together and they'll work something out. God knows that much of that attitude is often lauded on HN for other things.

austincheney 6y ago
Kind of. I am entering my fifth military deployment so I can speak to the nature of spontaneously formed teams of strangers. Intelligence is largely, but not completely, irrelevant. You learn to identify that a team is strongest due to a mix of good discipline and putting the proper personalities in the correct positions and then codifying a single common purpose. I recommend reading the book Good To Great for further examination.
AtHeartEngineer 6y ago
Agreed, I work in an environment with a lot of really smart people, but not everyone thinks outside the box or is ambitious in that way

dunkelheit 6y ago

The problem with this way of thinking is that existing markets are probably efficient enough - meaning all easy ways to make a lot of money have already been exhausted. This means that any idea that you generate by encountering a problem and thinking of a solution is probably either too hard to implement or will generate relatively puny revenue stream (nothing to sneeze at, but probably not of much interest to VCs and founders chasing big bucks). What's the alternative? To wait for tectonic shifts in overall environment and circumstances, look for vacant ecological niches and pounce when you see one. To the outside view this will look exactly like a founder who doesn't know what to start up. Here is an example I like: John Carmack. The conventional view is that he is a brilliant game programmer (which is undoubtedly true). But the alternative point of view is that his shtick was to capitalize on the period of incredible advances in consumer hardware. Each of his games fully showcased what the best hardware of that time was capable of (order of magnitude more than the previous generation) which made them instant hits. Not coincidentally, he quit making games around the time this period of advancement stopped. Here is a post by @defmacro making a similar point: http://www.defmacro.org/2015/02/25/startup-ideas.html http://www.defmacro.org/2015/02/25/startup-ideas.html

austincheney 6y ago
John Carmack's success is due to id Software incubated at Softdisk. The reality of that success, at least in the beginning, was an already established stream of revenue, a ready assembled team, and proper leadership. The brilliance and innovation of Carmack came later. They had day jobs, revenue, and product/market fit already established before spinning out of Softdisk to launch id. That isn't enough to account for the super stellar success they would later enjoy, but it fully explains launching a successful business. There isn't any magic or secret sauce there. > The problem with this way of thinking is that existing markets are probably efficient enough Oh, that's certainly not true. The challenge there is the expertise to see the current dysfunction versus the risk of solving for it. Solving for the dysfunction often comes at competition for the limited resources required for current practice of art and rejection from just about everybody. Knowing this there is a choice to be made: 1. Sustain the current practice with current income and no change in risk 2. Proceed with the solution knowing that failure is probable and that a startup begins with a financial valley of death (burns cash without the revenue to make up for it) while knowing the greatness of the idea is financially irrelevant. I say the greatness of the idea is financially irrelevant, because disruption requires some degree of originality and originality scares the shit out of people. That means the idea will burn money churning in frequent rejection until it achieves some manner of market assistance.

the_reformation 6y ago

> Stay away from people who are world-weary and belittle your ambitions.

LockAndLol 6y ago

> I always look at that like a soldier jacked up on adrenaline wearing an arsenal of ammunition ready to destroy the enemy having forgotten to ask who the enemy is or where they are. Lost. Maybe if they just start spraying ammo at everybody the enemy will suddenly make themselves known and something will stick. That is about the most American way of putting it. It also describes America in the middle East and lots of Africa. Weapons had to be sold and/or money had to be made. So people were attacked and when people started shooting back, suddenly there was a reason to invade.