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Having failed the startup game my fair share of times, I've found a more reliable way to come up with good ideas is to let others who need something give you id

Having failed the startup game my fair share of times, I've found a more reliable way to come up with good ideas is to let others who need something give you ideas. Work in a specific industry long enough that you learn about the trade and type of problems and solutions needed. I currently focus on providing services to ecommerce companies, and I get to hear all the time about their pain points and things they wish they had. It's given me a lot of ideas for products to work on and the bonus to that is I already have established relationships with my market, making it much easier to iterate, build case studies, and sell. A lot of the demographic on HN is engineers. That is an industry. You can start with asking your engineer friends and colleagues what painful engineering problems they face, why nothing they use is good enough, and what they wish they had to fix it. If you find enough people saying the same thing, then you've found a potential market. And luckily engineers are early adopter too.

mdorazio 6y ago
> Work in a specific industry long enough that you learn about the trade and type of problems and solutions needed. The problem with this is that the recent grads with effectively no practical experience to speak of can't start startups with VC funding and dreams of grandeur this way. But I agree that this is the best path to start a company that's actually likely to succeed based on actual long-term profitability and legitimate problem solving.
- Swizec 6y ago
  This is how you start a real company with actual potential that investors will love. But it doesn’t feed into the Silicon Valley career mill. So it doesn’t get talked about. SV’s assumption is that you want to “get signed” and start your path. Acquihire by acquihire you build a career. Some outliers get rich and motivate the others. The whole thing is a self-sustaining finance market. Failed founders provide the workforce, outliers provide the funds. And the mill keeps turning. (the real winners are GPs and LPs, the VCs are just as much hamster wheel runners as the rest of us, just later in the career)
sc90 6y ago
Skin in the game.
rmm 6y ago
Very true. I work in mining (physical not data) and it’s helped immensely.

mdorazio 6y ago

> Work in a specific industry long enough that you learn about the trade and type of problems and solutions needed. The problem with this is that the recent grads with effectively no practical experience to speak of can't start startups with VC funding and dreams of grandeur this way. But I agree that this is the best path to start a company that's actually likely to succeed based on actual long-term profitability and legitimate problem solving.

Swizec 6y ago
This is how you start a real company with actual potential that investors will love. But it doesn’t feed into the Silicon Valley career mill. So it doesn’t get talked about. SV’s assumption is that you want to “get signed” and start your path. Acquihire by acquihire you build a career. Some outliers get rich and motivate the others. The whole thing is a self-sustaining finance market. Failed founders provide the workforce, outliers provide the funds. And the mill keeps turning. (the real winners are GPs and LPs, the VCs are just as much hamster wheel runners as the rest of us, just later in the career)

sc90 6y ago

Skin in the game.

rmm 6y ago

Very true. I work in mining (physical not data) and it’s helped immensely.