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Ah, "MVP", a new term to add to my repertoire, haha. Your advice is very valuable sir, thank you. I'm well aware of the concept of sitting down with a piece of

Ah, "MVP", a new term to add to my repertoire, haha. Your advice is very valuable sir, thank you. I'm well aware of the concept of sitting down with a piece of paper and a pen and trying to come up with ideas for projects. Unfortunately I'm struggling with the right balance of "reading to learn" and "doing to learn". I know that doing things, implementing ideas, etc., is probably the most productive and beneficial thing I can do for myself, but I get into this "I most read about this and that" loop that is not efficient. The little amount of time I've spent trying to come up with projects have been unsuccessful but only because I do not spend considerable amount of time brainstorming. Your advice on how to approach this is excellent. As I wrote in my updated YC profile, I think we need more music apps for Android, but real music apps, not toys, so this is something I should put my attention on.

GFischer 14y ago
To get past your problem of your not "brainstorming" succesful ideas, I suggest you watch these slides by the creator of the Business Model Canvas: http://www.slideshare.net/Alex.Osterwalder/successful-entrepreneurship-5747012 http://www.slideshare.net/Alex.Osterwalder/successful-entrep... there are a ton of resources on Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/ http://ecorner.stanford.edu/ and Steve Blank's blog: http://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/ http://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/ Steve Blank wrote a book called Four Steps to Epiphany which is really good and advocates his "Customer Development" strategy: http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/upload/handouts/Four_Steps.pdf http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/upl... You'll see a common theme on most of those sites, which is basically to listen to the customer, "get out of the building" and validate your idea early (thus, the MVP) If you need some inspiration for brainstorming and protoyping, Stanford has some advice on their Design School site http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/exed/dtbc/ http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/exed/dtbc/ and some material is available here: http://dschool.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/BootcampBootleg2010v2SLIM.pdf http://dschool.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Bootc... look up "pretotyping", and the book Pretotype IT, it will inspire you: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0QztbuDlKs_ZTk2M2RhZWItYzk3YS00ZDZmLTgyZjItY2Y2ZWIyYjZkOTE3/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1 https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0QztbuDlKs_ZTk2M2RhZWItYzk3...
- rburgosnavas 14y ago
  Great stuff, thanks!

GFischer 14y ago

To get past your problem of your not "brainstorming" succesful ideas, I suggest you watch these slides by the creator of the Business Model Canvas: http://www.slideshare.net/Alex.Osterwalder/successful-entrepreneurship-5747012 http://www.slideshare.net/Alex.Osterwalder/successful-entrep... there are a ton of resources on Stanford's Entrepreneurship Corner: http://ecorner.stanford.edu/ http://ecorner.stanford.edu/ and Steve Blank's blog: http://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/ http://steveblank.com/tools-and-blogs-for-entrepreneurs/ Steve Blank wrote a book called Four Steps to Epiphany which is really good and advocates his "Customer Development" strategy: http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/upload/handouts/Four_Steps.pdf http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/upl... You'll see a common theme on most of those sites, which is basically to listen to the customer, "get out of the building" and validate your idea early (thus, the MVP) If you need some inspiration for brainstorming and protoyping, Stanford has some advice on their Design School site http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/exed/dtbc/ http://www.gsb.stanford.edu/exed/dtbc/ and some material is available here: http://dschool.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/BootcampBootleg2010v2SLIM.pdf http://dschool.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/Bootc... look up "pretotyping", and the book Pretotype IT, it will inspire you: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0QztbuDlKs_ZTk2M2RhZWItYzk3YS00ZDZmLTgyZjItY2Y2ZWIyYjZkOTE3/edit?hl=en_US&pli=1 https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B0QztbuDlKs_ZTk2M2RhZWItYzk3...

rburgosnavas 14y ago
Great stuff, thanks!