You can train yourself to get better at generating a lot of ideas. And you can train yourself to get better at evaluating ideas. Combine those and you can gener

You can train yourself to get better at generating a lot of ideas. And you can train yourself to get better at evaluating ideas. Combine those and you can generate good ideas. Also, I think there's a bit of a trap that you can fall into where you get too skilled at dismissing bad ideas. Most really groundbreaking things that I've seen started out as terrible ideas, but working on them revealed good ideas as a byproduct. If you work on things that are interesting, even if they feel not-mainstream-applicable, you might find something. Just be aware that the idea itself might not catch on. And remember, if this is something you want, it's very likely that there are other people like you who want the same thing. So it's not a matter of finding ideas that appeal to everyone, just making sure the scope is right for the market. If you build something that 5 people will be willing to pay $10 for, that's not worth spending too much time on but could be a fun weekend project. If 5 people will spend $10k on it, or if 5k people will spend $5, that's a different story. I personally think there is a big open space for projects that are "too small" to support a startup, but big enough to support a single dev.