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While innovation and trying to find start-up ideas is very praiseworthy, why not just trawl through the last YC Startup Directory list and figure out what might

While innovation and trying to find start-up ideas is very praiseworthy, why not just trawl through the last YC Startup Directory list and figure out what might fit your particular favorite domain, with some modification? I guess that if you came up with some completely novel idea, say facetiously, some cyrpto-subscription knock-off of flappy bird where you play against others. I can almost guarantee that if it showed any kind of traction, somebody out there would copy it either directly, or similarly enough. Then, if they get the execution down better than you, that's their start-up company taking off. It's the whole red ocean/blue ocean analogy - there's more good ideas out there already, badly executed, that are just waiting for you to pick up and do better.

nerpderp82 4y ago
Great ideas are everywhere! But you don't need good or even great ideas to make a startup, you need something that a VC will fund and that a big corp will acquire. Analyze that field and surf the gradient. Find whatever huge entity with lots of cash is throwing that cash around and figure out how to make something that the cash will stick to. Over the years it has been Autodesk, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Softbank, etc.
nthacker 4y ago
At first glance this sounds like genius but its not YC or any successful VC doesn't fund ideas. There is something else the founders have figured out which is key to success and funding. This could be a distribution trick, a key insight, a user growth metric. Its not hard to imagine YC or a VC coming across the same idea pitched by different founders. Why they picked the team they picked cannot be obvious from trawling the startup directory, that insight is hidden, its literally a secret that should be guarded
- grantsch 4y ago
  Only the ones that will succeed (very few, maybe 1%?) have a secret tho
  - nthacker 4y ago
    No. The secret is the gamble
- asdadsdad 4y ago
  I see Peter Thiel over here =) great insights.
achillesheels 4y ago
Because that is an abstract way of solving problems. One needs to feel the pain of the customer to gain necessarily greater “domain” expertise in intuitively perceiving conditional possibilities which are necessary in producing value, or regenerative feedback gain in the human system, e.g. society.

nerpderp82 4y ago

Great ideas are everywhere! But you don't need good or even great ideas to make a startup, you need something that a VC will fund and that a big corp will acquire. Analyze that field and surf the gradient. Find whatever huge entity with lots of cash is throwing that cash around and figure out how to make something that the cash will stick to. Over the years it has been Autodesk, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Softbank, etc.

nthacker 4y ago

At first glance this sounds like genius but its not YC or any successful VC doesn't fund ideas. There is something else the founders have figured out which is key to success and funding. This could be a distribution trick, a key insight, a user growth metric. Its not hard to imagine YC or a VC coming across the same idea pitched by different founders. Why they picked the team they picked cannot be obvious from trawling the startup directory, that insight is hidden, its literally a secret that should be guarded

grantsch 4y ago
Only the ones that will succeed (very few, maybe 1%?) have a secret tho
- nthacker 4y ago
  No. The secret is the gamble
asdadsdad 4y ago
I see Peter Thiel over here =) great insights.

achillesheels 4y ago

Because that is an abstract way of solving problems. One needs to feel the pain of the customer to gain necessarily greater “domain” expertise in intuitively perceiving conditional possibilities which are necessary in producing value, or regenerative feedback gain in the human system, e.g. society.