see http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html . i'm not a PG fanboy, your question is just directly relevant to what he wrote a

see http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html . i'm not a PG fanboy, your question is just directly relevant to what he wrote and i think he's right. basically, often times ideas that turn into billion-dollar ideas come from doing stuff smart people would already be doing anyway - writing BASIC interpreters (microsoft), good search engines (google), etc.