16 ms·

How to Get Startup Ideas

914 points by relation 14y ago

lewisflude 14y ago
I've been trying to work out what problems I have right now that I'd like to solve, and I really can't think of any that excite me, tech or otherwise. I eagerly await for a problem to come into my life to which the solution is only a few weekends of Ruby away.
- Swizec 14y ago
  I have plenty. I am eagerly awaiting market opportunities.
Swizec 14y ago
"For example, a social network for pet owners. It doesn't sound obviously mistaken. Millions of people have pets." I once worked on a social network for dog owners. Not pet owners, dog owners. And not actually dog owners, but their dogs. A place for people to have a social network of ... dogs. But all the features made it an interesting enough project. The guy even came up with enough money to pay the web agency I was working at for the development - yes, outsourcing core product to an agency. It took a year for the project to go from "I need devs" to "Build this". By then I had already given my notice at the agency with the dream of launching a cool startup. I don't know that the dog social network ever launched.
- taoye 14y ago
  Check www.poopur.com, a social network for pet owner and lover
- gfodor 14y ago
  Having heard this idea from multiple relatives over the years, I have to imagine that the trap of building the dog social network that everybody likes the idea but nobody would actually use has cost the economy several basis points of GDP.
- brc 14y ago
  These days, being a developer without a social network death-march project story is like being an EMT without a gory accident story. They do exist, but their box of anecdotes seems a little bare.
vlokshin 14y ago
Couldn't agree any more. Ideas should stem from problems. The "problem" with only solving problems for yourself, however, is that you may not be hitting a real market. The tech niche isn't exactly the norm (it's the .1%). Lean methodologies behind testing problems and market needs are definitely making it better, but it's still extremely time -consuming, can get costly, and can lead to nothing (which is still better than building a product that doesn't go anywhere). Landing pages, blog posts, setting controls & changes, analyzing the results and transferring those to actual needs and potential customers. It's a mess. If only there was something to solve this "problem" of figuring out which problem-solvers are market viable and which aren't quickly and affordably (without the massive learning curve). My team and I just may have to give tackling this one a try :)
deleted 14y ago
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panabee 14y ago
another suggestion for sourcing ideas is to identify weaknesses in popular products then build something where that weakness becomes a strength (e.g., browsing in smartphones => iphone, search in portals => google). re the unsexy filter, success can create sexiness. nike sells shoes. amazon sells books. salesforce sells enterprise software. yet these are all considered cool, sexy companies for the most part. if you build something people love, you can make it sexy. worry less about if something is sexy today, and worry more about building something people will love tomorrow. sexiness will follow.
paulsutter 14y ago
After 20 years of entrepreneurship, of struggles and successes, of spending man years of that time thinking about startup ideas, and having learned so many lessons the hard way, I can say the following: pg's essays are so true and correct that I could practically cry. If enough people read these essays (especially this and the recent "growth" essay), it could materially boost the economy.
- flipside 14y ago
  Reading essays like this drives me crazy. No, it's not because pg is wrong or I disagree with anything he's saying, it's because everything resonates with my startup (Tinj.co, interactive movie ratings) but after 1000+ pitches I still can't succinctly articulate how I know this. I could probably make a checklist for the criteria of great startup ideas (seems like a toy: check, personal problem: check, inspiration from other fields: check, etc) but I have a hard time imagining that to be persuasive. I guess all we can do is push on towards a beta and let traction speak for itself. Truly disruptive ideas are difficult to communicate because most people do not have the mental framework to truly grasp them. I guess that's just the catch-22 of disruptive ideas.
  - javajosh 14y ago
    I have four questions I'd like to ask you about your startup: 1. Does it help people address their fears? For example, are they afraid of not being heard? Or missing the next great movie? 2. Does it help people feel loved? For example, giving them an opportunity to warn people away from bad movies, or to offer unique insights? 3. Does it help people create or curate beauty? Movie ratings themselves are not very beautiful, but perhaps the personal curation piece is important to some. 4. Does it help people to eliminate ugliness? ...and I wrote this before checking your site. After seeing it, I have this sinking feeling that you are not really serious about your startup, as the homepage makes absolutely no attempt to describe what it is. Cold sign-ups are very 2004. honestly if I had checked first I wouldn't have bothered replying, but since it's already written, here you go. Hope it helps.
    - 14y ago
codyZ 14y ago
What is the difference between a "problem" or an "inconvenience" that is worthy for a startup to tackle? Alot of startups seem to have trouble deciphering that- sometimes spending immense efforts of time and money on a 'problem' that really is frivolous at best. ...On the other hand, I suppose for some ideas you would never know unless you tried to execute it...
napoleond 14y ago
pg drew a graph explaining "the well" after Startup School: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4685655 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4685655
kyro 14y ago
One thing I've noticed that has generated a ton of ideas, particularly within the hospital setting I'm in, is to listen to all the questions staff members ask one another. Who's doing that? When's this happening? How do I do that? etc. They're all seemingly mundane questions that get asked on a daily basis, but they give you great insight to the daily frustrations that people have come to accept (that's why they're boring everyday questions). They also often shed light on a lot of the accessory tasks people endure in order to accomplish their main job. As an example: in a hospital, we have the "sign out sheet" which is a list of the current patients and all of their important data. These sheets are usually manually updated and it's a very, very tedious task; you've got to make sure all the dosages are current, and they're already in the system! Anyway, I kept noticing the residents would ask one another if they had updated the sheet and realized this was a pain-point that's become an accepted part of the day-to-day medical routine. That's just one example. Good problems don't have to elicit noticeable frustration. In fact, I'd say many of the best problems around are ones that have pushed people past frustration and into acceptance.
- carbocation 14y ago
  > As an example: in a hospital, we have the "sign out sheet" which is a list of the current patients and all of their important data. This. Seriously, the Institute of Medicine has implicitly decided that this is the problem that it wants the world's entrepreneurs to solve. The IOM observed that there were many errors made in medicine. Errors in medicine harm and kill people. Many people believe that doctors (residents) who sleep too little are more liable to commit errors. They believe that a lack of sleep is dangerous to patients; therefore, the ACGME instituted duty hour restrictions on residents. As a consequence of this, residents work for fewer consecutive hours. Necessarily, they "hand off" their patients to one another more frequently than they did in the past. As you can imagine, there is also risk in the handoff process. The IOM and the ACGME, via their pronouncements and policies, have decided that long shifts are too dangerous to try to solve. Instead, they are willing to throw all of their eggs into the "handoffs must be safer than long shifts" basket. Handoffs are dangerous, hard, annoying, and they happen at least twice per shift per attending, resident, and midlevel provider every day. I don't mean to tell you how to solve handoff problems, but I do want to underscore the problem that kyro has identified.
nlh 14y ago
This is a spectacular essay. PG is dead-on correct here. In fact, one of the strongest reactions I had while reading it just now was "Shhh Paul, you're giving away the secret!" :) And this doesn't just apply to tech startups... The business I currently run (an exotic car rental company) started out precisely as described -- it was an idea I had to solve a problem I was facing (I wanted to rent a super-fancy car to drive across the country. Nobody in NYC offered that service). The business started as a fun side-project - a toy. I figured it would be a hobby business - something I could do in my spare time while I figured out what business I "really" wanted to start. I built it myself - did the deliveries, threw a website together, learned SEO, etc. And sure enough, I was surprised by how much other folks also wanted this service. So when I went live - the calls kept coming. That was 8.5 years ago, and the business now employs over 20 people and is about to open in its 3rd city. So take PG's words to heart - they're some of the best I've read.
- zalew 14y ago
  > The business I currently run (an exotic car rental company) wow, it sounds like an awesome business. drop a link so I can take a look at those babies. //edit: got it http://www.gothamdreamcars.com/our-fleet.htm http://www.gothamdreamcars.com/our-fleet.htm holy crap, nice collection (although I was hoping for some more diversity and vintages :)). If you don't mind me asking, I was always curious: who is the common clientele for these kind of services? People who own such cars at home and want something similar while travelling?
  - nlh 14y ago
    Thanks! The answer I generally give to "who are your clients?" is "yes" -- it's so across the board that even I was surprised. The median client really varies on location -- in NY it's typically a guy heading out to the Hamptons or Jersey Shore for the weekend of fun, but it's also women looking for a fun gift, celebrities looking for better service (though, somewhat surprisingly, celebrities more frequently rent what we call "luxury" cars -- BMWs, Mercedes, Range Rover, vs what we call "exotic" cars -- Ferraris and Lamborghinis), and, yes, folks who own them at home and like to try something similar-but-different while on the road.
codewright 14y ago
Pretty strong parallels here with his article about "schlep blindness". Specifically: " Drew Houston realizes he's forgotten his USB stick and thinks "I really need to make my files live online." Lots of people heard about the Altair. Lots forgot USB sticks. The reason those stimuli caused those founders to start companies was that their experiences had prepared them to notice the opportunities they represented." Also the section about "wells" and attacking a problem at least some people care deeply about, instead of a shallow 'hole' is one that has just allowed me to clarify and refine some of my thoughts and ideas about where I'm at right now. This was a massive help. Thanks for the great article pg.
F_J_H 14y ago
Having exited earlier this year from the start up I co-founded, I've been thinking a lot about this lately as I weigh up what to do next. We arrived at our start-up idea 10 years ago in much the way pg says you should, which was more by accident and serendipity more than anything else. So, I can vouch for the veracity of his advice. I came across the following quote by William S. Burroughs recently: Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war. Replace "Happiness" with "a start-up idea", and I think you get what pg is getting at: A Start-up idea is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek a start-up idea for itself seek victory without war. I also came across a great post on the relationship between serendipity and success, and is it well worth the read: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/10/when_success_is_born_out_of_serendipity.html http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/10/when_success_is_born_out_of_... I especially enjoyed this bit: Our mind abhors these serendipitous explanations, and searches for convenient patterns instead. Ask for the keys to career success and you'll get logical explanations, recommendations, pathways and approaches. Then ask someone how he or she became successful and suddenly it becomes a story of serendipitous encounters, unexpected changes in plans, and random consequences. It does not make sense to ignore this basic fact about success any longer.
- btyrad 14y ago
  I love your quotes! I am myself a founder just getting to market and these serendipitous encounters and random acts seem to pop up out of nowhere and solidify my progress. Cheers and thanks!
- gfodor 14y ago
  With regard to serendipity, I like to point to the fact that you cannot win a game of chance if you are not playing.
  - F_J_H 14y ago
    100% agree - thank you. Similar to the advice you read on "creating your own luck", you need to put yourself in situations where "serendipity" can happen more easily. In other words, if you want to become an actor, move to L.A. If you want to work in Finance, hang out in Wall Street, etc. There are of course no guarantees, and of course you can become an actor without living in L.A., and a financial analyst without being on wall street. If you walk through a bad neighborhood by yourself late at night with a George Costanza like wallet bulging in your back pocket, you increase your chances of being mugged. It won't happen every time, but you are certainly "tempting fate". So, "walk" in "neighborhoods" where you tempt fate in your favor. Go to meetups. Volunteer at organizations where people are trying to solve important problems. Ask people you find interesting to go for a coffee. Socialize with small business owners. Contribute to open source projects. There is an interesting Forbes article on "The Four Essential Personality Traits Of Every Entrepreneur", one of which is "Luck-Dominant": "...luck-dominant founders—which make up more than 25% of founders in the authors’ studies—are men and women whose positivity and intellectual curiosity create circumstances where a positive outcome is more likely. In other words, “they’re lucky by attitude, not by fate.” (link to article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/10/11/the-four-essential-personality-traits-of-every-entrepreneur/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/10/11/the-fo...)
mmvvaa 14y ago
My brother had just sent me this link while I was finishing up reading PG's essay: http://www.theuselessweb.com/ http://www.theuselessweb.com/. Coincidence?
- okok 14y ago
  Oh, yeah, that's kind of like this useless document: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa
mgummelt 14y ago
I really want someone to do [16] and report back.
- polyfractal 14y ago
  Having worked "IT" for my fraternity, I can say that this would be about as mundane as most business software is. Accounting, scheduling, keeping minutes of meetings, database of contacts.
olalonde 14y ago
On the more practical side, write down any idea you have no matter how crazy they sound or where you are (use your smartphone's Notes app). It will quickly become an habit and you'll soon find yourself with dozens of ideas. Eventually, the hard part will begin: choosing the right one. Another good trick is to write down those ideas on your blog at a fixed interval. This has two side effects: it forces you to either execute on an idea or let it go and it gets you feedback from your visitors. Here's my most recent idea dump: http://syskall.com/some-crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup-and-proje/index.html/ http://syskall.com/some-crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup-and-p...
sown 14y ago
I was going to ask about new markets but he seems to cover it: live in the future? Anyone else have other methods?
chewxy 14y ago
Choose something many people like a little vs Choose something few people like a lot. Sounds like start with a niche. Which is great advice. I like how in this essay pg managed to balance the idea of building something you really want (but may have a market size of 1) vs a problem that everyone has but is only a small itch-to-scratch problem I ran and failed a number of startups for a number of reasons, and I think this essay resonated the most with me as the idea fountain never stops. Choosing the ideas were in fact the difficult parts, and I know a few months down the track, I'd be reading it again.
hiddenstage 14y ago
Twitter was built so people would be able to blog via SMS. That was the idea; that was the problem they were setting out to solve. That's not what made them big. They inadvertently solved the need of microblogging. No need to maintain blogs; no need to write long posts. Just a simple, short way to keep people informed with what you are doing. But that's not what made them big either. What made them big is celebrities took to it and used it as their main form of communication with their fans. That's why I made an account a few years back and I'd venture to say over half of the active users did the exact same. Twitter has since evolved past that, at least for me, but it was definitely the initial reason for the boom. Would they have been successful without that? Probably not. So is Twitter a good idea? I don't know. I really don't know.
- brunov 14y ago
  I remember thinking how atrociously bad the idea of limiting your expression to 140 characters (or any other short limit) seemed to me. And here I am, going on my third year of being an avid Twitter user. Sometimes ideas play out in interesting, new ways. I very much doubt that the originators of Twitter thought of even half the ways their service is being used today.
- emmett 14y ago
  Twitter was obviously a great idea, but it wasn't an obviously great idea. Just because no one (including the Twitter guys) could see the direction it would grow in doesn't mean that it wasn't a great place to start. In retrospect, clearly it was.
  - lmm 14y ago
    Are they profitable yet? I'm still not entirely convinced Twitter isn't just one big bubble.
  - hiddenstage 14y ago
    I guess I don't think there is a 100% correlation between success and a great idea. I think that luck can be just as big a factor in success as the idea, especially in the mass consumer space. If celebrities didn't take to Twitter I very much doubt they would have hundreds of millions of users now. You could argue the idea is what drove celebrities to use the service, but did it? If another service came out before or around the same time that celebrities used instead, would we say "Twitter is obviously a great idea that just didn't catch on?"
ekosz 14y ago
I remember Evan Koslow talked about this idea back in 2010. It was a pretty interesting lecture[1]. [1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=cDAitd3nHqM#t=1095s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Noticing is key for me. I have zillions of startup ideas from mundane to crazy, they are all outgrowths of noticing either something missing or someone frustrated or being frustrated myself and wanting something, or to do something, and not being able to. Strangely (or perhaps not) getting married made me better at noticing. I could sit in a room and watch TV because there was 'nothing else to do' when my wife sat in the exact same room she saw all sorts of things that needed doing. And when she pointed them out they became obvious to me too. Perhaps I'm an inveterate slacker but those things were deeply camouflaged against the patina of knik-knacks that couldn't hide from her. Oh there is the radio that needs the knob glued to work again, that corner needs a light fixture. The top speakers are covered in dust, the board games have started tumbling out of the AV cabinet and are threatening the dog cushion. I had invested way too much time as a youth trying not to see things I didn't have time to do or want to do, that I perfected my non-vision vision. She helped switch that off which made my marriage better (fewer arguments) and suddenly seeing things that could be better but weren't yet. One of those 'benched' (sort of ideas was a computer system for teaching computer science. The Raspberry Pi helps wonderfully in that regard. So sometimes even when I don't make progress things get better :-).
Geee 14y ago
Observe everything and learn new things. This leads to (problems ∩ solutions) = ideas. Sooner or later you'll have more great ideas than you'll ever have time to execute.
GregBuchholz 14y ago
Free startup idea for the day. 3D design software for the masses. It seems to cover lots of the bases in the article. I feel the need for this right now (just this weekend I wanted to print out a plastic part to fix the broken piece on my lawn mower). 3D printing seems to be an up-and-coming area. The hardware for this is still being perfected, but the software seems further behind. There are lots of competitors making 3D modeling software, ranging from FOSS to the ultra-expensive enterprise-y, but they all seem to have a very steep learning curve. Most people who are going to own 3D printers aren't going to want to dedicate their live to learning the intricacies of 3D CAD. Ideally, I'd think the software would be based on photogammetry [1], which would allow you to take pictures of an object you want to copy, but allowing you to make tweaks (i.e. extend the portion that is missing because it broke off, etc). Think of the MS-Paint for 3D objects. I think it covers the unsexy and schlep aspects, since it seems doable, but would take a lot of tedious work. It seems like it could start out very focused at first, and expand from there. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry
- jbarham 14y ago
  > 3D design software for the masses https://tinkercad.com/ https://tinkercad.com/
  - PanMan 14y ago
    This! I'm convinced 3D printing will become a lot cheaper, but until I played with tinkercad last weekend I thought the design of objects would be really complex. Here it's quite easy!
- tarr11 14y ago
  Since everyone is on the 3D thing ... What about a Kinko's for 3D printing?
  - GregBuchholz 14y ago
    http://www.shapeways.com/ http://www.shapeways.com/ probably the closest to the Kinko's of 3D printing.
larrys 14y ago
I'm curious about this statement that appears at the bottom (and I've see this before obviously): "Thanks to Sam Altman, Mike Arrington, Paul Buchheit, John Collison, Patrick Collison, Garry Tan, and Harj Taggar for reading drafts of this, and Marc Andreessen, Joe Gebbia, Reid Hoffman, Shel Kaphan, Mike Moritz and Kevin Systrom for answering my questions about startup history." (my emphasis) To what extent do these individual contribute and/or suggest corrections of an essay like this?
Lucadg 14y ago
The social network for pets is actually not such a bad idea. I've got friends who build one in a niche: - only in italian - only for one race of dog and it so many users I could not believe it. It's kind of funny and depressing reading them: they write in the first person as it was the dog talking. Stuff like "hello my friends, today my master gave me a bath". Wow... :) (I won't link it, as they seem to be very jealous of the idea). On "A particularly promising way to be unusual is to be young", I'd like to add another way to be unusual: "A particularly promising way to be unusual is to be travel" I mean travel a lot, not short holiday breaks of course. Stuff like go to live 3 months in Mexico, 6 months in Bali and so on. I did all this for what, 10 years, and I have more ideas than I can chew. I'm not that good in executing thought. And one last thing. Pick your most "status quo" friend. You know, those guys who are absolutely convinced nothing will ever change and nothing ever changed and everything is normal as it is, today. They live in the present. Run your ideas on them. If they go "naa...who needs that?" you may have a good idea. It happened to me a few years back when I had already started an online reservation business in Prague and decided to try the same in Riga, Latvia. This "status quo" friend had already told me Prague would not work "nobody will trust a website to reserve an apartment". When we went to Riga he told me "naaaa...who would come to Riga, this is like the Soviet Union and it's far". It worked, immediately. I mean zero investments, html websites and stuff like that. Really low tech. Thinking about it now, with low cost flights coming in from all over Europe and no passport requirements, he admits I was right. But I am sure that if I present him with another idea he would still go: "nnaaa...who would..". Good, time to build it! You need a friend like that.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  I was joking with some friends when Ignite100 started up again this year I was going to apply with "It's going to be a social network, but for pets!" as it was a funny idea over beers. Couple of months on I feel like I should have had a go at it, people love their pets, Facebook frowns on pets profiles but loves people using their open graph and associated tools, so there's a dynamic there.
YuriNiyazov 14y ago
Getting advice from an essay by PG is like reading a description of a stock market strategy - by the time you read and assimilate it, everyone else has too, and that particular inefficiency has been eliminated. There will now be a lot more HN readers keeping diaries of all the things that they noticed were inefficient in their day, and they will come up with good, competing startup ideas. However, the founder that is likely to be the most successful was the one that started doing this long before this essay came out. Which is actually the point of a large part of the essay, the one that talks about being "the right type of person".
- DaniFong 14y ago
  Relatedly, Blake Masters was publishing notes from Peter Thiel's startup class. Though they were public, for anyone to see, we were able to read the notes, understand his philosophy, and raise money in an area he'd never invested before.
- Xcelerate 14y ago
  It's not necessarily a new idea. In fact, I posted a note to myself on Facebook in August that reads "Try hard to recognize problems; then come up with the solution." (Yeah, it's weird to post notes to yourself on FB but I actually see my notes on a daily basis and nobody else does since they're on 'only me'). The thing is, most people will read this essay and go "Yeah, yeah! That's great. I'm going to do that" and then forget about it by next Sunday. So I don't think you need to worry too much.
- pg 14y ago
  Except unlike stock market investing, startups are not a zero sum game.
  - hiddenstage 14y ago
    Stock market investing isn't a zero sum game anymore than VC investing or even Y Combinator. Edit: OK, YC adds much more hands on value to businesses, but the investment aspect is exactly the same as it would be if you bought shares over the market.
saturdayplace 14y ago
I'd recently come to the same conclusion that programming is a fantastic secondary skill. Having some other domain expertise - combined with the ability to make your own tools - seems to be the best way to find problems that people are willing to pay money to solve.
dps 14y ago
I was struck by the Bucheit/Pirsig conjecture "Live in the future, then build what's missing." and the following paragraph regarding ideas that come out of folks experience at college. Pg encourages those readers who are still studying to take classes unrelated to their CS major so that they may see more problems worth solving, but what struck e about this paragraph was how much, for me, college was like living in the future. In the late nineties, I lived in an environment where every single member of my social circle had an always-on 10 Mbit connection to the Internet and spent inordinate amounts of time communicating via email, IM etc. It seems like no coincidence that so many successful Internet companies were born out of students of that era. I doubt that today's students encounter the future of much at all in their dorm rooms. Perhaps universities should be working hard to make sure that campus living is more like living in the future than setting up mobile app development courses, incubators etc etc.
groby_b 14y ago
[16] is a rather cynical view of women in sororities. Maybe it's actually true for American colleges - I have no experience there. I doubt it is. At it's core, it seems to be saying "Ask women what they need, then build it for them". Start with that attitude, and women will have no interest in your product - because you begin by assuming they're incapable of building the things they need themselves.
- bri3d 14y ago
  What percentage of people know how to build software they want themselves? I suspect it's a relatively low number - hence developers making comparatively quite decent salaries and software companies having an excellent potential for massive returns. I don't really see this point as sexist or anti-sorority (although it's true sororities are heavily stereotyped in the US, in my experience) - I think this question would be equally applicable as "find stylish young people in a bar and ask them what they'd want or need to advance socially with a wide audience online." The idea is that sororities self-select for people who are interested in being social, and that women in sororities are often trendsetters and hence excellent marketing targets.
- jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
  Lets not ask the doctors what they want; maybe they will get offended because we think they can't build themselves.
  - groby_b 14y ago
    Do you really think "work for hire" is a great way to generate startup ideas? This is exactly what pg is pitching there. The advice also goes strictly against what pg himself is advising in the same article: The place to start looking for ideas is things you need. There must be things you need. [14] But let's look at the one example that pg gives in the article: Rajat Suri didn't offer to write any software restaurants might need - he learned what they needed, and then struck out on his own. If anybody had suggested he should just work as free IT for restaurants, that would sound kind of ridiculous, no? But please, try out his advice, see how it works for you.
bitteralmond 14y ago
Automatic upvote for a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance quite. And this is so spectacularly true it hurts.
ryan 14y ago
I love the concept of living in the future. I recently read the biography of Dan Raymer, a well-known aerospace designer, which was appropriately titled 'Living in the Future'[1]. This is because for most of his career he had been working on secret aircraft designs that the rest of the worldn't see for 20 years. Truly living in the future. There's also the excellent quote attributed to William Gibson[2] "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed". That's probably the biggest reason I live in silicon valley - there is a disproportionate amount of 'future' distributed here. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Living-Future-Education-Adventures-Advanced/dp/0972239723 http://www.amazon.com/Living-Future-Education-Adventures-Adv... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson
selvan 14y ago
Generate ideas to solve a problem. If you have 'n' ideas to solve a problem, it is n x 1 complexity. Issue with using ideas as your problem is that you have to find actual problem first, then solution next. 'm' ideas as your problem and another 'n' ideas for each problem, it is m x n complexity. Use lean principles to find a solution to a problem that you understood well.
AndrewKemendo 14y ago
These principals apply equally within large organizations too. So once your startup is humming and a few years, even decades old, you now have an HR department and a law firm who works solely on your suits, remember these things. The difference however is that instead of a new and massive muscle movement, it will be refining and pruning the tree to make things more efficient, cost effective and empowering.
wololo 14y ago
technically, on social networks for pet owners: http://crunchbase.com/company/dogster http://crunchbase.com/company/dogster (also did catster)
- astrofinch 14y ago
  Not sure what to make of this: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=dogster http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=dogster
  - wololo 14y ago
    Hmm, it's virtually identical to http://google.com/trends/explore#q=myspace http://google.com/trends/explore#q=myspace. Winner take all?
akproxy 14y ago
I was pleasantly surprised that this post by PG was not from Feb 2001.
pseut 14y ago
At least this essay lets me feel better about my inefficient toy projects.
ComputerGuru 14y ago
I actually gave a TEDx talk on this topic, my conclusion (similar to PGs, but more succinctly summed up in 10 words) was any time you find yourself saying "this is stupid, there has to be a better way..." BINGO! you've got a startup topic. Just actually keep track of it, and you'll find it happens more often than you realize. The talk, should anyone actually want to listen to me talk for 20 minutes: http://youtu.be/bPwgkf1aZ9I http://youtu.be/bPwgkf1aZ9I (the guy controlling the projector had a hard time with the remote, the background slides keep going out of order :(
- iamwil 14y ago
  btw, Thomas Edison didn't invent the lightbulb. Lightbulbs were around. He improved on it. Actually, his lab assistants did most of the work. And speaking of necessity is the mother of all inventions, Thomas Edison's phonograph invention (again, it was his lab assistants) came before he applied it to a need. It took him a while to figure out to apply it to the music industry.
  - ComputerGuru 14y ago
    Thanks for listening. I debated using the TE example beforehand, I am ashamed to say that I gave that speech knowing he wasn't the real inventor. I needed to connect to my audience, this was in another country and TE is one of the few inventors on their knowing.
iamwil 14y ago
Reading this was like a punch in the gut, in the same way that Family Guy comedy hits you right there just by stating what's plainly in sight. I saw all the mistakes, things I've discovered, and hard lessons I've learned along the way phrased and frame in a clear way--so much so I don't know whether to laugh or cry.
- panayi 14y ago
  It was a punch in the stomach. Only wish I could talk to my 2-3 years younger self.
srid68 14y ago
Let me first talk about the elephant in the room about finding Startup Ideas which generate extra ordinary returns. YC assembles a Team of the Greatest Founders after extensive validation by the most qualified people in the planet to judge whether you have the qualities required to build a startup. (They may miss a good team, but the probability of them selecting a bad team is less than 10%) YC mentors these teams ideas by making the best people in Silicon Valley available to these teams so that they can pivot and re-work on the most probable idea which may succeed Expected Outcome to Founders: Conservatively 50% of YC funded Startups would be back to the point of their starting (Zero returns for the effort invested both for the founder as well as the investors) Some Founders may even have negative returns in Health, Relationship and sometime financially. Extected Outcome to YC and the World in Large: Even less than 10% hit a home run, they have extra ordinary returns and the world becomes a better place hopefully because of realization of new ideas. What does this tell me, this tell me that there is no relation between Ideas and the extra ordinary results which every founder is look towards, then why waste time looking for a needle in a haystack. As a startup founder who identified a big pain (Fragmentation of Operating Systems for Applications to be developed on - It does not make financial scence to develop the same functionality three or more times) about 2 years back and started working on a solution to solve my own pain, i have come to the conclusion even after solving the problem, financial success will not come easily by just working on a Idea. But Working on this Idea made me understand how to get success. Just follow in the footsteps of the YC. What does YC do, it enables and guides others start on the path of founding a startup and takes a % if you succeed. Since the returns are extra ordinary, even if a few succeed they win. A example: Any developer can just start doing Minimum Viable Prototype (1 to 3 months effort for a capable person) for any interesting idea for 1% non dilutable equity return (!Don't spend any effort after MVP and don't ask for money to do the prototype!) which others are interested in pursing for a mythical return. This is equvalent to emulating YC and may have a better return on effort. Of course if all the people whom you sponsor are duds, your expected return will be zero which is also what YC is solving, If their luck is so bad that they don't have home runs, they would have wasted their money, where as you would have enjoyed trying to solve interesting problems even if they have failed and in the situation your MVP becomes a Instagram. Your 1% is 10 Million dollars. All the above are assumptions which i am planning to verify (But not a a developer but as a Micro Angel) and hope to see what will happen. If you earn based on Effort you are an employee, if you earn based on the value created by your Effort you are a consultant or most of the current startups, but if you earn based on other peoples effort willingly parted, then you are true scaleable startup which has a higher probability of success. If your idea can make others succeed in what ever they do, but there is a link to return based on their success of their idea, the probability of making extra ordinary returns becomes possible. AirBnb succeed because it is an idea which makes others monetize their living space. YC succeeds because YC shows the path to wealth generation for founders even if 50% of founders fail. Last point is about Idea about Pets which pg assumed is a bad idea. My take on it is (I have no domain expertise on this), Pet Foods is a multi-billion dollar business, i know there are many pet food stores selling pet food, i also know that the pet food suppliers are multi-million dollar corporations. If i create a simple Mobile Pet Food Cataloging/Ordering/PreOrdering system (a 3 months effort) and give it away free to these pet food stores for giving to their customers and collate all these data and can sell the viewing of this data to the pet food supplier, I have a just in time inventory replenishment system. So many inefficiencies can be remove by asking the customer to preorder pet food. You remove overstocking, managing discounts. You effectively become the middle man between the Pet food supplier and the Pet Food store/Customer. I am not saying that this is a good idea, but just rejecting an idea because pets.com was a flop is not the correct way to go about it. You should deeply think about any idea before discarding it. A disciple of pg giving an alternative viewpoint.
bernardom 14y ago
If the we assume the hypothesis is true (that exposure to real-life business problems generates the best startup ideas), wouldn't it follow that management consultants have tons of great business ideas? I mean, if I want to maximize my exposure to "seeing the same problem crop up over and over in similar industries," that's how I'd go about doing it. Are there good examples of "former consultants who decided to start a company building the tools they used to make for every new client?" RJMetrics is the only one that comes to mind. (This is not a loaded question; I was one and am in that place now. My potential cofounders and I are engineers but not developers; that's a barrier but not insurmountable)
graeme 14y ago
Only tangentially on topic, but I imagine someone here knows the answer: is there currently an Airbnb for cars? AirBnb lets you monetize your spare housing capacity for rent. Congested cities are full of cars with spare capacity that isn't being monetized. I'm not the only one that's noticed this. Someone will eventually try to use smartphones + ridesharing to use this spare capacity. Is anyone doing it at present?
- 18pfsmt 14y ago
  I know of two, but I can't think of either name right now. One of them presented at TC Disrupt in NYC back in, I think, 2010.
  - portman 14y ago
    GetAround
- pemulis 14y ago
  Lyft, Sidecar, Ridejoy, Tickengo, Reward Ride, Avego, Carpooling.com, RelayRides, and a bunch of other ones.
- nja 14y ago
  RelayRides comes to mind.
- frabcus 14y ago
  In the UK, WhipCar
novaleaf 14y ago
from the article, pg: "Whereas the activation energy required to switch to a new search engine is low. Which in turn is why search engines are so much better than enterprise software." is that last sentence a joke? if yes, i think it is too subtle, a lot of dry sponges would soak it up. if it's NOT a joke... ummmm... wtf?
- aaronbrethorst 14y ago
  The cost of switching from Google Search to Bing Search (or whatever) is typing in a different address in the address bar[1]. The cost of replacing your multi-million dollar CRM solution is, obviously, millions of dollars. [1] ok, not really, but you get the idea.
  - novaleaf 14y ago
    yes i agree with your statement and actually pg's entire article, it's just the " Which in turn is why search engines are so much better than enterprise software." which is throwing me in a loop. maybe i'm taking it out of context, but anyway, seems i'm the only one, so nevermind ;)
- lubujackson 14y ago
  I think the point is that competition is much more fierce for search engines because they have no lock-in. Enterprise software can get by with all sorts of warts because people simply can't get rid of it even if they want to.
damian2000 14y ago
Great read. I don't think PG addressed this in his essay, but I was wondering about the fear some startups have - whether their idea may be easily rolled into the product of an existing encumbent. E.g. I read below someone's startup idea is for a new type of movie rating system ("because 5 stars just isn't good enough anymore") - but couldn't this be easily wiped out if an encumbent like IMDB just rolled the idea directly into their rating system.
jamesjyu 14y ago
Many huge businesses have been built by solving seemingly mundane problems. The thing is, many of these mundane problems turn out to be big looming issues that represent huge inefficiencies in an industry. Businesses are willing to pay lots of money to solve these problems, especially if it makes them more efficient or profitable. This spurs on a thought that I've had about the position of entrepreneurship and human society. The cohort of startups are all hard at work solving problems that consumers or businesses run into. It's like the human collective organism that is constantly evolving to become better, stronger, and faster. Startups are the seeds of the experiments that could become a business that makes a huge impact to the organism. Imagine how much more efficient the world is with Google, for example! If all businesses and founders were to take pg's advice here, the practical (and important) problems in society would be solved at a much more dramatic rate.
sidcool 14y ago
"Live in the future, then build what's missing." This hit home run.
greenranger 14y ago
In the spirit of this article, I would like to point out something broken with pg's essays (which are otherwise excellent) -- the footnotes should appear in the right margin beside the paragraphs that reference them. Its unlikely a reader will continuously scroll up and down to read them, and by the time the end of the article is reached they have lost all context. The essays on grantland.com are a good example of this done well.
SeoxyS 14y ago
I think it comes down simply to: don't set out to make a startup. That's the wrong mind set. You shouldn't be creating a startup for the sake of creating a startup. You should be setting out to solve a problem, and somehow happen to turn that into a startup along the way.
- srid68 14y ago
  Exactly and this is what i said in my comment in a roundabout way. You should solve problems which interest you and not even think whether that will become a startup. If you want to create a startup, then you should think of solving other peoples problem and not your problem.
vadimoss 14y ago
An online Art Gallery in 1995 is not a bad but rather a premature idea for that epoche. It's a norm for the Art to be a decade or so behind the technology world. No wonder Google launched this idea with Google Art Project in 2011, which is more appropriate as far as timing concerned. How about the lost art gallery? http://galleryoflostart.com http://galleryoflostart.com @PG - you are just ahead of the crowd. Timing and luck are two ingredients of the same origin. Good timing is essentially luck:) On the other hand hard working is a guarantee of success if the "good timing" component presents.
- nicholas73 14y ago
  Try reading "The 15 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark"... basically the art market is smoke and mirrors. The dealers actually don't want a website, as that would reduce their mystique and commoditize their wares. A small local dealer might be convinced to sell online, but as one shop owner said to me on this: "don't bother".
pknerd 14y ago
I liked Matt Cuts way to find a problem and solve it. Worth reading http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/business-ideas/ http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/business-ideas/
skdoo 14y ago
1. Thinks "I really need X... why doesn't it exist?" 2. Domain expertise in X 3. Thinks "I could build X!" 4. Actually builds X The intersection 1+2 occurs often, and 1+2+3 more recently. 2+3+4 are fun for hacking. A PhD thesis is 1+2+3+4, but with a very limited 1. The startup I'm at (my first) is the first time I've worked on something that strongly intersects 1+2+3+4.
alenam 14y ago
pg's essays are so true and correct that I could practically cry.
matteodepalo 14y ago
I'm wondering if the reasoning that you should build a startup based on your own needs is applicable to ideas that have already been solved abroad and will not be imported in your country for some time. We don't live all in the Silicon Valley and people feel the same needs all over the world. Let's take the Stripe example. I live in Italy and I would use their product right now. Too bad they are not here and will not be here for quite a long time I foresee. Is it a good idea to create a startup that solves this need NOW for Europe? PayMill thought it was. The same for Netflix; in Italy (and most of Europe) we don't have a single decent service for renting movies online. Sometimes I feel I should build a service like Netflix here, but what if Netflix comes here 1 year later? It would probably crush my service.
- melvinmt 14y ago
  Yes and no. While cloning a service in a different geographical area may be profitable and successful on the short term, it's never going to be a Facebook or a Google on a global scale. It's like opening up an Italian restaurant in a small little town that doesn't have an Olive Garden yet. If that's the kind of business you want to be in that's fine, but it's not the high-growth kind of startup that many of us are trying to build. It's "just" a cash cow.
  - matteodepalo 14y ago
    I tend to feel this way as well about clones, however your example IMHO doesn't really catch the problem. If the Italian restaurant is very good and aimed at a selective audience it can win against a big brand that aims at everyone. Of course they can only win if they don't try to clone an Olive Garden. The problem here is not making something small to beat a giant competitor, it's to build something exactly like a service you know to be very very good for the purpose of having it now. Indiegogo is a good example for this; they are like Kickstarter and offer a very good service to Europe. Considering Kickstarted wont be here for a long time I think they caught a good opportunity.
- qznc 14y ago
  On the other hand, when Netflix comes 1 year later, they might just buy you. If not they will probably have a hard time adapting to regional issues. Italian consumers are probably subtly different to US consumers. This friction also works in reverse, though. As a startup you have a hard time to get the deals with the movie industry, while Netflix already has the connections.
known 14y ago
In globalized world, sell first, build later
justplay 14y ago
whatever you said pg,its true. I completely agree and should work on problem which we are facing. We is more natural to realize where we missing to provide solution and in what way. @pg, why dont you upgrade your design ? You have so much money . You can hire best designer . If you say,i can contribute my design to you .
kokey 14y ago
The comment about the social network for pet owners made me think of this, which actually turns out to be quite a good idea I think: http://abovethecrowd.com/2012/11/13/our-most-recent-marketplace-investment-dogvacay-from-los-angeles/ http://abovethecrowd.com/2012/11/13/our-most-recent-marketpl... "DogVacay is an online marketplace that links dog owners with passionate dog care providers who open up their own home as an alternative to the traditional cage-oriented kennel."
- ajju 14y ago
  I am a huge fan, advocate, and frequent user and host on DogVacay - actually we are hosting a dog right now. DogVacay is not a social network for pet owners, nor do they seem to want to be one, thankfully. DogVacay is really good at one thing - finding me dog owners who can take care of my dog better than a random professional kennel (and usually for less money). They are a marketplace disrupting the unsexy kennel business by taking advantage of the subtle facts that almost no dog owner likes kennels, most of them would trust another dog owner more than one, and that many dog owners (and even people without pets) and their dogs would actually enjoy hosting someone else's pet for a few days. I don't even do it for the money.
nadam 14y ago
"For example, a social network for pet owners. It doesn't sound obviously mistaken." It is not obvious so much that actually there are several social networks for pet owners with apparently hunderds of thousands (registered) users. There is one even in Hungary where I live (only 10million people live in Hungary), but here are some english sites also: http://webtrends.about.com/od/socialnetworks/tp/pet-social-networks.htm http://webtrends.about.com/od/socialnetworks/tp/pet-social-n... Yes probably this is not a huge market, but some people make some money off of this. So, yes, it is totally not obvious what startup ideas are good or bad.
- chmike 14y ago
  PG's analysis has a bias for Dropbox or Facebook like ideas which are true startups and VC's dream. Of course there is plenty of room between idea for startups and idea for minimum viable businesses.
timmillwood 14y ago
I'm really bad at thinking of ideas, even thought about setting up a site to crowd source ideas, but didn't want to get into all the copyright and intellectual property issues.
nazgulnarsil 14y ago
All the sexy problems I think of are illegal to solve.
wslh 14y ago
" The prices of gene sequencing and 3D printing are both experiencing Moore's Law-like declines. What new things will we be able to do in the new world we'll have in a few years?" An OkCupid for best genetic matching?
- gopi 14y ago
  genepartner.com
jfdimark 14y ago
As usual, an excellent and well articulated essay from pg. Just a couple of thoughts on the paragraph about finding non-organic ideas. If you're a developer and in need of an idea, I couldn't recommend highly enough to attend industry conferences (in any industry). Over the day or two you are there, you will hear speakers tell you the problems they face, hear which are the repeat questions asked from the audience, and have a chance to talk with delegates about their biggest problems and why they are attending (what are they trying to find out). I rarely leave a conference without several obvious pain points facing the industry jotted down. If one of them inspires you, sounds interesting, feels familiar etc. then that could be your start-up idea. Most of these could be 'eaten by software' I'm sure, so they would be ripe for a developer to tackle. You could even find your domain-specific co-founder there too - 2 birds, 1 stone! Another place to look (and possibly cheaper and involving no travel) would be sites like twitter, quora, linkedin etc. where large numbers of users can ask each other questions or complain about some pain they have. You could look for trends and see if that sparks any interest.
Spectral 14y ago
Right now I'm currently 21 years old and I've had quite a few organic ideas pop up before which I took the time to brainstorm a little about, sometimes even creating a little website for them. I've shown to many of my friends my aspiring entrepreneur-ish spirit and many of them support my ideas, but I'm still at a standstill over here. I personally feel that the main problem I'm going through is that the college I chose to go to is subpar, to the level where it does not produce many people with "dreams." Everyone around me are just lazy people who like to party, so unless I spend all day trying to go to other campuses to talk to people, I find that I rarely get to experience an intelligent conversation about tech, career goals, and whatnot. Has anyone ever encountered this and have any advice for me? I go to Cal Poly Pomona and have many smart friends (from highschool) but they go to schools like UC Berk, UCI, UCLA, etc.
speric 14y ago
This essay made me purchase "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". A few pages in and I am glad I bought it.
tarice 14y ago
>So if you're a CS major and you want to start a startup, instead of taking a class on entrepreneurship you're better off taking a class on, say, genetics. Or better still, go work for a biotech company. CS majors normally get summer jobs at computer hardware or software companies. But if you want to find startup ideas, you might do better to get a summer job in some unrelated field. THIS. The field of CS has so many people in it, it's difficult to find an idea that somebody hasn't already implemented in 4+ languages. If you branch out into other fields, you become infinitely more valuable to said fields, plus the problems in other, not-as-programming-saavy fields become readily apparent. I know it's been repeated elsewhere, but as a chemical engineer I feel obligated to spread the word.
earroway 14y ago
In my case 1. Source of ideas: How to I make my everyday life simpler? 2. Filter criteria: Will I pay for this, if so how much?
lifebeyondfife 14y ago
This has given me a little shot of confidence. I've just finished my first mini-site with potential revenue stream. From the few places I've marketed it thus far, not many have really "got" what problem I'm trying to solve. But it's a problem I genuinely have and am thrilled to have a solution to it. I just need to find the others who'd like to drink from the well. (Well idea: as I've gotten older I no longer care to keep up on all music related media and there are too many bands I like releasing music I don't want to miss. I've made a service that allows you to keep track of releases from your favourite artists chronologically so you don't miss out on any.)
- animal 14y ago
  This sounds like something I'd be interested in. Link?
  - lifebeyondfife 14y ago
    Cheers, currently working on some write-ups for my blog about how I - as a pure desktop/server developer - found my first web project. http://whatsnewmusic.com/ http://whatsnewmusic.com/
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cs702 14y ago
FWIW, it's not just pg who has pursued one of those "sitcom" ideas that seem good (but really are not) before pivoting to make a different product that solves a real problem. Before Microsoft, Bill Gates and Paul Allen built and tried to sell a hardware product (!) called the Traf-O-Data. The device processed raw data from roadway traffic counters and printed out human-readable reports for traffic engineers. Luckily for the two budding entrepreneurs, they were unable to close the first sale, leading them subsequently to pivot into making Basic interpreters for microcomputers.[1] -- [1] http://startup.nmnaturalhistory.org/gallery/story.php?ii=45 http://startup.nmnaturalhistory.org/gallery/story.php?ii=45
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mattmaroon 14y ago
I don't think I'd define Facebook or Google as something "few others realize are worth doing". Facebook launched around the same time as a score of social networks, so lots of people realized it was worth doing. People also realized search engines were worth doing (Google was probably not even among the first 20 launched) they just didn't realize Yahoo was beatable. Or how lucrative they could be.
lubujackson 14y ago
Good essay. My trick is to realize that humans simply cannot produce ideas, they can only refine them (whether or not that is true doesn't really matter). By thinking that, the only option you have is to LISTEN for ideas and spend all your time trying to whittle down what you hear to something that has a nugget of interest. And then if you worry that idea in your head 4 times as long as a normal person would, you are bound to get to an interesting place with it. I'd recommend that even if you don't want to make a startup because it makes the world a more interesting place to be.
tolos 14y ago
consciousness raising: > When searching for ideas, look in areas where you have some expertise. If you're a database expert, don't build a chat app for teenagers (unless you're also a teenager). Maybe it's a good idea, but you can't trust your judgment about that, so ignore it. There have to be other ideas that involve databases, and whose quality you can judge. Do you find it hard to come up with good ideas involving databases? That's because your expertise raises your standards. Your ideas about chat apps are just as bad [emphasis mine], but you're giving yourself a Dunning-Kruger pass in that domain.
joeag 14y ago
If you're not sure if there is a pain you are solving, try the Nail it Then Scale it cold call test. Cold call 10 target customers and briefly describe what you think their pain is and how your solution eliminates it. Usually you will have to leave a voicemail. If you don't get at least 50% return calls, you haven't identified a pain bad enough to support "a 2 person startup that nobody has ever heard of with a rudimentary solution" - which is what you will be!
michaelochurch 14y ago
I think what makes startup idea generation hard is that humans suck when it comes to low probabilities. We don't have the intuitive tools to differentiate between 0, 0.000001, and 0.001, because we never needed them in our evolutionary frame, but in massively multi-agent systems like markets, those distinctions matter.
GoldiKam 14y ago
Super awesome, Thoroughly covered post
barce 14y ago
tl;dr Work on what you think is cool. Are you all applying for YCombinator? There's so much effusive praise for Paul. ;) He mentions 3 basic factors: the founders want it, they can build it, and it goes un-noticed. "Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all began this way." I agree with this premise, and he backs up the 1st point really well. The 2nd point isn't really worth arguing. Ya, you've got to have product. What was disconcerting to me was that he went after the pet websites. It made me laugh a bit. As someone who used to work for Dogster.com and Catster.com which were both successful niche websites that were profitable and sold to "Say Media," I'd have to say no to this: 'The danger of an idea like this is that when you run it by your friends with pets, they don't say "I would never use this." ...Sum that reaction across the entire population, and you have zero users.' Zero users is simply false. Dogster.com still has the kind of usage that isn't the home run Paul is looking for in his investments, but it is sustainable. The 3rd point about not-noticing has two excpetions: Hegel and PayPal. Let's stick to the second. Elon Musk noticed it from the very start as a competitor running what was then also a payment system known as X.com. I think when he added his startup DNA into the mix, although it led to an employee revolt and his ouster, it made PayPal stronger. This is where Hegel comes in: the dialectic of history is a pattern that can be seen everywhere, even in startups, but that's another blog post.
avk 14y ago
> "This is an instance of a more general rule: focus on users, not competitors. The most important information about competitors is what you learn via users anyway." I found this to be the strongest way of saying don't obsess about your competition. Focusing on users will probably help address other issues as well (i.e. working on the wrong problem, building the wrong thing, not making as much of an impact as you could be, etc).
- josephlord 14y ago
  And I would agree with both of you but you do need to be better at something for someone than your competitors. You don't need to be better at everything or everyone but there needs to be a reason to use you rather than your competitor for at least a subset of people..
xkiwi 14y ago
Amazing that how every essay PG written can shows you the ideas. -You have to be a founder to found, who you are defines what you can do. -just another founder at work
brianpan 14y ago
> [4] This gets harder as you get older. While the space of ideas doesn't have dangerous local maxima, the space of careers does. There are fairly high walls between most of the paths people take through life, and the older you get, the higher the walls become. Ain't that the truth. This footnote stung a bit. Take advantage of the flexibility of youth!
is74 14y ago
My method for generating startup ideas is notice the things that I hate. For example, I hate shaving, and would kill for a device that I can stick my face into and become clean-shaven one minute later. I also hate choosing the shower temperature -- I want the shower learn the temperatures I like. I also hate not knowing the definition of terms in government websites. I can't stand passwords. Etc. This feeling is my indicator of a good potential startup idea.
genuine 14y ago
"The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas." That is the best thing I've ever read from PG. But I would say, "Ideas lead to action, and only action builds a startup. Ideas upon ideas lead to ideas, not a startup."
j45 14y ago
One thing I believe is that if something is revolutionary, it's going to be revolutionary without you having to say it. This essay made me feel a little unsettled. It described things I find myself doing (solve small problems and let them grow) for the sake of solving problems, which hasn't been popular with all the people working on being revolutionaries in my life. After I read Startup = Growth, I felt I read the YCombinator Manifesto, and so much clarity packed into an essay where most others replace one set of confusing concepts with their own. Together, I think this essay speaks to something bigger that I've believed in. You are the only, and most important start you'll ever work on. learning to learn, recognize, focus on and solve the right kinds of problems is what will make all of the difference. After reading this essay, I get why YC focuses so much on a person's tenacity. I could apply with any of my ideas that mostly live in the future, are useful, functional, valuable, and most of all, simple and obvious. I didn't know if I could belong in an accelerator, but, just for the personal mentoring alone for becoming a better creator of what's missing in the future, I'd do it to just be around the conversations.
OafTobark 14y ago
Post states Jeff Bezos couldn't hack, he graduated in EECS according to wikipedia and a few other sources noted he was a CS major.
- flyinRyan 14y ago
  That doesn't mean he can code.
  - OafTobark 14y ago
    Nor does it mean he can't
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zio99 14y ago
I'm curious: where would Pinterest be on this graph? If Microsoft was for a few 1000 users, and if the best ideas are "organic," would Pinterest be bookmarking naturally "evolved" or did it pivot to a website for curation, sharing with like-minded individuals more recently [1]? It seems to me what's more important is tackling an emerging field (like Microsoft did) than a declining one (which some "organic" companies may do if they are too late into the game). Also, what do you guys think? Do the "sitcom ideas" have it easier with raising money, and finding their niche after? [1] Read Ben's email here: http://spectralight.com/myblog/2012/11/09/the-secret-is-exposed-on-pinterests-secret-boards/ http://spectralight.com/myblog/2012/11/09/the-secret-is-expo...
jonnycowboy 14y ago
I'm surprised a great source of ideas hasn't been mentions: Google search suggestions. For example, try typing "build android apps" (don't hit Enter). Hundreds/thousands are looking for how to make apps with: no programming experience, or easily or with another language eg: python). Good market to be in!
aufreak3 14y ago
"..coming up with startup ideas is a question of seeing the obvious." I got a wake-up call from my 5yr old that felt like this. He pointed up and said "look". I asked him "what is it?" ... "tree!". I bit my tongue humbled. I wish to be able to see the "trees of ideas-in-waiting" like he does and not take the status quo for granted.

914 points by relation 14y ago

I've been trying to work out what problems I have right now that I'd like to solve, and I really can't think of any that excite me, tech or otherwise. I eagerly await for a problem to come into my life to which the solution is only a few weekends of Ruby away.

Swizec 14y ago
I have plenty. I am eagerly awaiting market opportunities.

Swizec 14y ago

"For example, a social network for pet owners. It doesn't sound obviously mistaken. Millions of people have pets." I once worked on a social network for dog owners. Not pet owners, dog owners. And not actually dog owners, but their dogs. A place for people to have a social network of ... dogs. But all the features made it an interesting enough project. The guy even came up with enough money to pay the web agency I was working at for the development - yes, outsourcing core product to an agency. It took a year for the project to go from "I need devs" to "Build this". By then I had already given my notice at the agency with the dream of launching a cool startup. I don't know that the dog social network ever launched.

taoye 14y ago
Check www.poopur.com, a social network for pet owner and lover
gfodor 14y ago
Having heard this idea from multiple relatives over the years, I have to imagine that the trap of building the dog social network that everybody likes the idea but nobody would actually use has cost the economy several basis points of GDP.
brc 14y ago
These days, being a developer without a social network death-march project story is like being an EMT without a gory accident story. They do exist, but their box of anecdotes seems a little bare.

vlokshin 14y ago

Couldn't agree any more. Ideas should stem from problems. The "problem" with only solving problems for yourself, however, is that you may not be hitting a real market. The tech niche isn't exactly the norm (it's the .1%). Lean methodologies behind testing problems and market needs are definitely making it better, but it's still extremely time -consuming, can get costly, and can lead to nothing (which is still better than building a product that doesn't go anywhere). Landing pages, blog posts, setting controls & changes, analyzing the results and transferring those to actual needs and potential customers. It's a mess. If only there was something to solve this "problem" of figuring out which problem-solvers are market viable and which aren't quickly and affordably (without the massive learning curve). My team and I just may have to give tackling this one a try :)

deleted 14y ago

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panabee 14y ago

another suggestion for sourcing ideas is to identify weaknesses in popular products then build something where that weakness becomes a strength (e.g., browsing in smartphones => iphone, search in portals => google). re the unsexy filter, success can create sexiness. nike sells shoes. amazon sells books. salesforce sells enterprise software. yet these are all considered cool, sexy companies for the most part. if you build something people love, you can make it sexy. worry less about if something is sexy today, and worry more about building something people will love tomorrow. sexiness will follow.

paulsutter 14y ago

After 20 years of entrepreneurship, of struggles and successes, of spending man years of that time thinking about startup ideas, and having learned so many lessons the hard way, I can say the following: pg's essays are so true and correct that I could practically cry. If enough people read these essays (especially this and the recent "growth" essay), it could materially boost the economy.

flipside 14y ago
Reading essays like this drives me crazy. No, it's not because pg is wrong or I disagree with anything he's saying, it's because everything resonates with my startup (Tinj.co, interactive movie ratings) but after 1000+ pitches I still can't succinctly articulate how I know this. I could probably make a checklist for the criteria of great startup ideas (seems like a toy: check, personal problem: check, inspiration from other fields: check, etc) but I have a hard time imagining that to be persuasive. I guess all we can do is push on towards a beta and let traction speak for itself. Truly disruptive ideas are difficult to communicate because most people do not have the mental framework to truly grasp them. I guess that's just the catch-22 of disruptive ideas.
- javajosh 14y ago
  I have four questions I'd like to ask you about your startup: 1. Does it help people address their fears? For example, are they afraid of not being heard? Or missing the next great movie? 2. Does it help people feel loved? For example, giving them an opportunity to warn people away from bad movies, or to offer unique insights? 3. Does it help people create or curate beauty? Movie ratings themselves are not very beautiful, but perhaps the personal curation piece is important to some. 4. Does it help people to eliminate ugliness? ...and I wrote this before checking your site. After seeing it, I have this sinking feeling that you are not really serious about your startup, as the homepage makes absolutely no attempt to describe what it is. Cold sign-ups are very 2004. honestly if I had checked first I wouldn't have bothered replying, but since it's already written, here you go. Hope it helps.
  - 14y ago

codyZ 14y ago

What is the difference between a "problem" or an "inconvenience" that is worthy for a startup to tackle? Alot of startups seem to have trouble deciphering that- sometimes spending immense efforts of time and money on a 'problem' that really is frivolous at best. ...On the other hand, I suppose for some ideas you would never know unless you tried to execute it...

napoleond 14y ago

pg drew a graph explaining "the well" after Startup School: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4685655 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4685655

kyro 14y ago

One thing I've noticed that has generated a ton of ideas, particularly within the hospital setting I'm in, is to listen to all the questions staff members ask one another. Who's doing that? When's this happening? How do I do that? etc. They're all seemingly mundane questions that get asked on a daily basis, but they give you great insight to the daily frustrations that people have come to accept (that's why they're boring everyday questions). They also often shed light on a lot of the accessory tasks people endure in order to accomplish their main job. As an example: in a hospital, we have the "sign out sheet" which is a list of the current patients and all of their important data. These sheets are usually manually updated and it's a very, very tedious task; you've got to make sure all the dosages are current, and they're already in the system! Anyway, I kept noticing the residents would ask one another if they had updated the sheet and realized this was a pain-point that's become an accepted part of the day-to-day medical routine. That's just one example. Good problems don't have to elicit noticeable frustration. In fact, I'd say many of the best problems around are ones that have pushed people past frustration and into acceptance.

carbocation 14y ago
> As an example: in a hospital, we have the "sign out sheet" which is a list of the current patients and all of their important data. This. Seriously, the Institute of Medicine has implicitly decided that this is the problem that it wants the world's entrepreneurs to solve. The IOM observed that there were many errors made in medicine. Errors in medicine harm and kill people. Many people believe that doctors (residents) who sleep too little are more liable to commit errors. They believe that a lack of sleep is dangerous to patients; therefore, the ACGME instituted duty hour restrictions on residents. As a consequence of this, residents work for fewer consecutive hours. Necessarily, they "hand off" their patients to one another more frequently than they did in the past. As you can imagine, there is also risk in the handoff process. The IOM and the ACGME, via their pronouncements and policies, have decided that long shifts are too dangerous to try to solve. Instead, they are willing to throw all of their eggs into the "handoffs must be safer than long shifts" basket. Handoffs are dangerous, hard, annoying, and they happen at least twice per shift per attending, resident, and midlevel provider every day. I don't mean to tell you how to solve handoff problems, but I do want to underscore the problem that kyro has identified.

nlh 14y ago

This is a spectacular essay. PG is dead-on correct here. In fact, one of the strongest reactions I had while reading it just now was "Shhh Paul, you're giving away the secret!" :) And this doesn't just apply to tech startups... The business I currently run (an exotic car rental company) started out precisely as described -- it was an idea I had to solve a problem I was facing (I wanted to rent a super-fancy car to drive across the country. Nobody in NYC offered that service). The business started as a fun side-project - a toy. I figured it would be a hobby business - something I could do in my spare time while I figured out what business I "really" wanted to start. I built it myself - did the deliveries, threw a website together, learned SEO, etc. And sure enough, I was surprised by how much other folks also wanted this service. So when I went live - the calls kept coming. That was 8.5 years ago, and the business now employs over 20 people and is about to open in its 3rd city. So take PG's words to heart - they're some of the best I've read.

zalew 14y ago
> The business I currently run (an exotic car rental company) wow, it sounds like an awesome business. drop a link so I can take a look at those babies. //edit: got it http://www.gothamdreamcars.com/our-fleet.htm http://www.gothamdreamcars.com/our-fleet.htm holy crap, nice collection (although I was hoping for some more diversity and vintages :)). If you don't mind me asking, I was always curious: who is the common clientele for these kind of services? People who own such cars at home and want something similar while travelling?
- nlh 14y ago
  Thanks! The answer I generally give to "who are your clients?" is "yes" -- it's so across the board that even I was surprised. The median client really varies on location -- in NY it's typically a guy heading out to the Hamptons or Jersey Shore for the weekend of fun, but it's also women looking for a fun gift, celebrities looking for better service (though, somewhat surprisingly, celebrities more frequently rent what we call "luxury" cars -- BMWs, Mercedes, Range Rover, vs what we call "exotic" cars -- Ferraris and Lamborghinis), and, yes, folks who own them at home and like to try something similar-but-different while on the road.

codewright 14y ago

Pretty strong parallels here with his article about "schlep blindness". Specifically: " Drew Houston realizes he's forgotten his USB stick and thinks "I really need to make my files live online." Lots of people heard about the Altair. Lots forgot USB sticks. The reason those stimuli caused those founders to start companies was that their experiences had prepared them to notice the opportunities they represented." Also the section about "wells" and attacking a problem at least some people care deeply about, instead of a shallow 'hole' is one that has just allowed me to clarify and refine some of my thoughts and ideas about where I'm at right now. This was a massive help. Thanks for the great article pg.

F_J_H 14y ago

Having exited earlier this year from the start up I co-founded, I've been thinking a lot about this lately as I weigh up what to do next. We arrived at our start-up idea 10 years ago in much the way pg says you should, which was more by accident and serendipity more than anything else. So, I can vouch for the veracity of his advice. I came across the following quote by William S. Burroughs recently: Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war. Replace "Happiness" with "a start-up idea", and I think you get what pg is getting at: A Start-up idea is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek a start-up idea for itself seek victory without war. I also came across a great post on the relationship between serendipity and success, and is it well worth the read: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/10/when_success_is_born_out_of_serendipity.html http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/10/when_success_is_born_out_of_... I especially enjoyed this bit: Our mind abhors these serendipitous explanations, and searches for convenient patterns instead. Ask for the keys to career success and you'll get logical explanations, recommendations, pathways and approaches. Then ask someone how he or she became successful and suddenly it becomes a story of serendipitous encounters, unexpected changes in plans, and random consequences. It does not make sense to ignore this basic fact about success any longer.

btyrad 14y ago
I love your quotes! I am myself a founder just getting to market and these serendipitous encounters and random acts seem to pop up out of nowhere and solidify my progress. Cheers and thanks!
gfodor 14y ago
With regard to serendipity, I like to point to the fact that you cannot win a game of chance if you are not playing.
- F_J_H 14y ago
  100% agree - thank you. Similar to the advice you read on "creating your own luck", you need to put yourself in situations where "serendipity" can happen more easily. In other words, if you want to become an actor, move to L.A. If you want to work in Finance, hang out in Wall Street, etc. There are of course no guarantees, and of course you can become an actor without living in L.A., and a financial analyst without being on wall street. If you walk through a bad neighborhood by yourself late at night with a George Costanza like wallet bulging in your back pocket, you increase your chances of being mugged. It won't happen every time, but you are certainly "tempting fate". So, "walk" in "neighborhoods" where you tempt fate in your favor. Go to meetups. Volunteer at organizations where people are trying to solve important problems. Ask people you find interesting to go for a coffee. Socialize with small business owners. Contribute to open source projects. There is an interesting Forbes article on "The Four Essential Personality Traits Of Every Entrepreneur", one of which is "Luck-Dominant": "...luck-dominant founders—which make up more than 25% of founders in the authors’ studies—are men and women whose positivity and intellectual curiosity create circumstances where a positive outcome is more likely. In other words, “they’re lucky by attitude, not by fate.” (link to article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/10/11/the-four-essential-personality-traits-of-every-entrepreneur/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghancasserly/2012/10/11/the-fo...)

mmvvaa 14y ago

My brother had just sent me this link while I was finishing up reading PG's essay: http://www.theuselessweb.com/ http://www.theuselessweb.com/. Coincidence?

okok 14y ago
Oh, yeah, that's kind of like this useless document: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mona_Lisa

mgummelt 14y ago

I really want someone to do [16] and report back.

polyfractal 14y ago
Having worked "IT" for my fraternity, I can say that this would be about as mundane as most business software is. Accounting, scheduling, keeping minutes of meetings, database of contacts.

olalonde 14y ago

On the more practical side, write down any idea you have no matter how crazy they sound or where you are (use your smartphone's Notes app). It will quickly become an habit and you'll soon find yourself with dozens of ideas. Eventually, the hard part will begin: choosing the right one. Another good trick is to write down those ideas on your blog at a fixed interval. This has two side effects: it forces you to either execute on an idea or let it go and it gets you feedback from your visitors. Here's my most recent idea dump: http://syskall.com/some-crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup-and-proje/index.html/ http://syskall.com/some-crazy-and-not-so-crazy-startup-and-p...

sown 14y ago

I was going to ask about new markets but he seems to cover it: live in the future? Anyone else have other methods?

chewxy 14y ago

Choose something many people like a little vs Choose something few people like a lot. Sounds like start with a niche. Which is great advice. I like how in this essay pg managed to balance the idea of building something you really want (but may have a market size of 1) vs a problem that everyone has but is only a small itch-to-scratch problem I ran and failed a number of startups for a number of reasons, and I think this essay resonated the most with me as the idea fountain never stops. Choosing the ideas were in fact the difficult parts, and I know a few months down the track, I'd be reading it again.

hiddenstage 14y ago

Twitter was built so people would be able to blog via SMS. That was the idea; that was the problem they were setting out to solve. That's not what made them big. They inadvertently solved the need of microblogging. No need to maintain blogs; no need to write long posts. Just a simple, short way to keep people informed with what you are doing. But that's not what made them big either. What made them big is celebrities took to it and used it as their main form of communication with their fans. That's why I made an account a few years back and I'd venture to say over half of the active users did the exact same. Twitter has since evolved past that, at least for me, but it was definitely the initial reason for the boom. Would they have been successful without that? Probably not. So is Twitter a good idea? I don't know. I really don't know.

brunov 14y ago
I remember thinking how atrociously bad the idea of limiting your expression to 140 characters (or any other short limit) seemed to me. And here I am, going on my third year of being an avid Twitter user. Sometimes ideas play out in interesting, new ways. I very much doubt that the originators of Twitter thought of even half the ways their service is being used today.
emmett 14y ago
Twitter was obviously a great idea, but it wasn't an obviously great idea. Just because no one (including the Twitter guys) could see the direction it would grow in doesn't mean that it wasn't a great place to start. In retrospect, clearly it was.
- lmm 14y ago
  Are they profitable yet? I'm still not entirely convinced Twitter isn't just one big bubble.
- hiddenstage 14y ago
  I guess I don't think there is a 100% correlation between success and a great idea. I think that luck can be just as big a factor in success as the idea, especially in the mass consumer space. If celebrities didn't take to Twitter I very much doubt they would have hundreds of millions of users now. You could argue the idea is what drove celebrities to use the service, but did it? If another service came out before or around the same time that celebrities used instead, would we say "Twitter is obviously a great idea that just didn't catch on?"

ekosz 14y ago

I remember Evan Koslow talked about this idea back in 2010. It was a pretty interesting lecture[1]. [1] - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=cDAitd3nHqM#t=1095s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Noticing is key for me. I have zillions of startup ideas from mundane to crazy, they are all outgrowths of noticing either something missing or someone frustrated or being frustrated myself and wanting something, or to do something, and not being able to. Strangely (or perhaps not) getting married made me better at noticing. I could sit in a room and watch TV because there was 'nothing else to do' when my wife sat in the exact same room she saw all sorts of things that needed doing. And when she pointed them out they became obvious to me too. Perhaps I'm an inveterate slacker but those things were deeply camouflaged against the patina of knik-knacks that couldn't hide from her. Oh there is the radio that needs the knob glued to work again, that corner needs a light fixture. The top speakers are covered in dust, the board games have started tumbling out of the AV cabinet and are threatening the dog cushion. I had invested way too much time as a youth trying not to see things I didn't have time to do or want to do, that I perfected my non-vision vision. She helped switch that off which made my marriage better (fewer arguments) and suddenly seeing things that could be better but weren't yet. One of those 'benched' (sort of ideas was a computer system for teaching computer science. The Raspberry Pi helps wonderfully in that regard. So sometimes even when I don't make progress things get better :-).

Geee 14y ago

Observe everything and learn new things. This leads to (problems ∩ solutions) = ideas. Sooner or later you'll have more great ideas than you'll ever have time to execute.

GregBuchholz 14y ago

Free startup idea for the day. 3D design software for the masses. It seems to cover lots of the bases in the article. I feel the need for this right now (just this weekend I wanted to print out a plastic part to fix the broken piece on my lawn mower). 3D printing seems to be an up-and-coming area. The hardware for this is still being perfected, but the software seems further behind. There are lots of competitors making 3D modeling software, ranging from FOSS to the ultra-expensive enterprise-y, but they all seem to have a very steep learning curve. Most people who are going to own 3D printers aren't going to want to dedicate their live to learning the intricacies of 3D CAD. Ideally, I'd think the software would be based on photogammetry [1], which would allow you to take pictures of an object you want to copy, but allowing you to make tweaks (i.e. extend the portion that is missing because it broke off, etc). Think of the MS-Paint for 3D objects. I think it covers the unsexy and schlep aspects, since it seems doable, but would take a lot of tedious work. It seems like it could start out very focused at first, and expand from there. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photogrammetry

jbarham 14y ago
> 3D design software for the masses https://tinkercad.com/ https://tinkercad.com/
- PanMan 14y ago
  This! I'm convinced 3D printing will become a lot cheaper, but until I played with tinkercad last weekend I thought the design of objects would be really complex. Here it's quite easy!
tarr11 14y ago
Since everyone is on the 3D thing ... What about a Kinko's for 3D printing?
- GregBuchholz 14y ago
  http://www.shapeways.com/ http://www.shapeways.com/ probably the closest to the Kinko's of 3D printing.

larrys 14y ago

I'm curious about this statement that appears at the bottom (and I've see this before obviously): "Thanks to Sam Altman, Mike Arrington, Paul Buchheit, John Collison, Patrick Collison, Garry Tan, and Harj Taggar for reading drafts of this, and Marc Andreessen, Joe Gebbia, Reid Hoffman, Shel Kaphan, Mike Moritz and Kevin Systrom for answering my questions about startup history." (my emphasis) To what extent do these individual contribute and/or suggest corrections of an essay like this?

Lucadg 14y ago

The social network for pets is actually not such a bad idea. I've got friends who build one in a niche: - only in italian - only for one race of dog and it so many users I could not believe it. It's kind of funny and depressing reading them: they write in the first person as it was the dog talking. Stuff like "hello my friends, today my master gave me a bath". Wow... :) (I won't link it, as they seem to be very jealous of the idea). On "A particularly promising way to be unusual is to be young", I'd like to add another way to be unusual: "A particularly promising way to be unusual is to be travel" I mean travel a lot, not short holiday breaks of course. Stuff like go to live 3 months in Mexico, 6 months in Bali and so on. I did all this for what, 10 years, and I have more ideas than I can chew. I'm not that good in executing thought. And one last thing. Pick your most "status quo" friend. You know, those guys who are absolutely convinced nothing will ever change and nothing ever changed and everything is normal as it is, today. They live in the present. Run your ideas on them. If they go "naa...who needs that?" you may have a good idea. It happened to me a few years back when I had already started an online reservation business in Prague and decided to try the same in Riga, Latvia. This "status quo" friend had already told me Prague would not work "nobody will trust a website to reserve an apartment". When we went to Riga he told me "naaaa...who would come to Riga, this is like the Soviet Union and it's far". It worked, immediately. I mean zero investments, html websites and stuff like that. Really low tech. Thinking about it now, with low cost flights coming in from all over Europe and no passport requirements, he admits I was right. But I am sure that if I present him with another idea he would still go: "nnaaa...who would..". Good, time to build it! You need a friend like that.

nicholassmith 14y ago
I was joking with some friends when Ignite100 started up again this year I was going to apply with "It's going to be a social network, but for pets!" as it was a funny idea over beers. Couple of months on I feel like I should have had a go at it, people love their pets, Facebook frowns on pets profiles but loves people using their open graph and associated tools, so there's a dynamic there.

YuriNiyazov 14y ago

Getting advice from an essay by PG is like reading a description of a stock market strategy - by the time you read and assimilate it, everyone else has too, and that particular inefficiency has been eliminated. There will now be a lot more HN readers keeping diaries of all the things that they noticed were inefficient in their day, and they will come up with good, competing startup ideas. However, the founder that is likely to be the most successful was the one that started doing this long before this essay came out. Which is actually the point of a large part of the essay, the one that talks about being "the right type of person".

DaniFong 14y ago
Relatedly, Blake Masters was publishing notes from Peter Thiel's startup class. Though they were public, for anyone to see, we were able to read the notes, understand his philosophy, and raise money in an area he'd never invested before.
Xcelerate 14y ago
It's not necessarily a new idea. In fact, I posted a note to myself on Facebook in August that reads "Try hard to recognize problems; then come up with the solution." (Yeah, it's weird to post notes to yourself on FB but I actually see my notes on a daily basis and nobody else does since they're on 'only me'). The thing is, most people will read this essay and go "Yeah, yeah! That's great. I'm going to do that" and then forget about it by next Sunday. So I don't think you need to worry too much.
pg 14y ago
Except unlike stock market investing, startups are not a zero sum game.
- hiddenstage 14y ago
  Stock market investing isn't a zero sum game anymore than VC investing or even Y Combinator. Edit: OK, YC adds much more hands on value to businesses, but the investment aspect is exactly the same as it would be if you bought shares over the market.

saturdayplace 14y ago

I'd recently come to the same conclusion that programming is a fantastic secondary skill. Having some other domain expertise - combined with the ability to make your own tools - seems to be the best way to find problems that people are willing to pay money to solve.

dps 14y ago

I was struck by the Bucheit/Pirsig conjecture "Live in the future, then build what's missing." and the following paragraph regarding ideas that come out of folks experience at college. Pg encourages those readers who are still studying to take classes unrelated to their CS major so that they may see more problems worth solving, but what struck e about this paragraph was how much, for me, college was like living in the future. In the late nineties, I lived in an environment where every single member of my social circle had an always-on 10 Mbit connection to the Internet and spent inordinate amounts of time communicating via email, IM etc. It seems like no coincidence that so many successful Internet companies were born out of students of that era. I doubt that today's students encounter the future of much at all in their dorm rooms. Perhaps universities should be working hard to make sure that campus living is more like living in the future than setting up mobile app development courses, incubators etc etc.

groby_b 14y ago

[16] is a rather cynical view of women in sororities. Maybe it's actually true for American colleges - I have no experience there. I doubt it is. At it's core, it seems to be saying "Ask women what they need, then build it for them". Start with that attitude, and women will have no interest in your product - because you begin by assuming they're incapable of building the things they need themselves.

bri3d 14y ago
What percentage of people know how to build software they want themselves? I suspect it's a relatively low number - hence developers making comparatively quite decent salaries and software companies having an excellent potential for massive returns. I don't really see this point as sexist or anti-sorority (although it's true sororities are heavily stereotyped in the US, in my experience) - I think this question would be equally applicable as "find stylish young people in a bar and ask them what they'd want or need to advance socially with a wide audience online." The idea is that sororities self-select for people who are interested in being social, and that women in sororities are often trendsetters and hence excellent marketing targets.
jQueryIsAwesome 14y ago
Lets not ask the doctors what they want; maybe they will get offended because we think they can't build themselves.
- groby_b 14y ago
  Do you really think "work for hire" is a great way to generate startup ideas? This is exactly what pg is pitching there. The advice also goes strictly against what pg himself is advising in the same article: The place to start looking for ideas is things you need. There must be things you need. [14] But let's look at the one example that pg gives in the article: Rajat Suri didn't offer to write any software restaurants might need - he learned what they needed, and then struck out on his own. If anybody had suggested he should just work as free IT for restaurants, that would sound kind of ridiculous, no? But please, try out his advice, see how it works for you.

bitteralmond 14y ago

Automatic upvote for a Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance quite. And this is so spectacularly true it hurts.

ryan 14y ago

I love the concept of living in the future. I recently read the biography of Dan Raymer, a well-known aerospace designer, which was appropriately titled 'Living in the Future'[1]. This is because for most of his career he had been working on secret aircraft designs that the rest of the worldn't see for 20 years. Truly living in the future. There's also the excellent quote attributed to William Gibson[2] "The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed". That's probably the biggest reason I live in silicon valley - there is a disproportionate amount of 'future' distributed here. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Living-Future-Education-Adventures-Advanced/dp/0972239723 http://www.amazon.com/Living-Future-Education-Adventures-Adv... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson

selvan 14y ago

Generate ideas to solve a problem. If you have 'n' ideas to solve a problem, it is n x 1 complexity. Issue with using ideas as your problem is that you have to find actual problem first, then solution next. 'm' ideas as your problem and another 'n' ideas for each problem, it is m x n complexity. Use lean principles to find a solution to a problem that you understood well.

AndrewKemendo 14y ago

These principals apply equally within large organizations too. So once your startup is humming and a few years, even decades old, you now have an HR department and a law firm who works solely on your suits, remember these things. The difference however is that instead of a new and massive muscle movement, it will be refining and pruning the tree to make things more efficient, cost effective and empowering.

wololo 14y ago

technically, on social networks for pet owners: http://crunchbase.com/company/dogster http://crunchbase.com/company/dogster (also did catster)

astrofinch 14y ago
Not sure what to make of this: http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=dogster http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=dogster
- wololo 14y ago
  Hmm, it's virtually identical to http://google.com/trends/explore#q=myspace http://google.com/trends/explore#q=myspace. Winner take all?

akproxy 14y ago

I was pleasantly surprised that this post by PG was not from Feb 2001.

pseut 14y ago

At least this essay lets me feel better about my inefficient toy projects.

ComputerGuru 14y ago

I actually gave a TEDx talk on this topic, my conclusion (similar to PGs, but more succinctly summed up in 10 words) was any time you find yourself saying "this is stupid, there has to be a better way..." BINGO! you've got a startup topic. Just actually keep track of it, and you'll find it happens more often than you realize. The talk, should anyone actually want to listen to me talk for 20 minutes: http://youtu.be/bPwgkf1aZ9I http://youtu.be/bPwgkf1aZ9I (the guy controlling the projector had a hard time with the remote, the background slides keep going out of order :(

iamwil 14y ago
btw, Thomas Edison didn't invent the lightbulb. Lightbulbs were around. He improved on it. Actually, his lab assistants did most of the work. And speaking of necessity is the mother of all inventions, Thomas Edison's phonograph invention (again, it was his lab assistants) came before he applied it to a need. It took him a while to figure out to apply it to the music industry.
- ComputerGuru 14y ago
  Thanks for listening. I debated using the TE example beforehand, I am ashamed to say that I gave that speech knowing he wasn't the real inventor. I needed to connect to my audience, this was in another country and TE is one of the few inventors on their knowing.

iamwil 14y ago

Reading this was like a punch in the gut, in the same way that Family Guy comedy hits you right there just by stating what's plainly in sight. I saw all the mistakes, things I've discovered, and hard lessons I've learned along the way phrased and frame in a clear way--so much so I don't know whether to laugh or cry.

panayi 14y ago
It was a punch in the stomach. Only wish I could talk to my 2-3 years younger self.

srid68 14y ago

Let me first talk about the elephant in the room about finding Startup Ideas which generate extra ordinary returns. YC assembles a Team of the Greatest Founders after extensive validation by the most qualified people in the planet to judge whether you have the qualities required to build a startup. (They may miss a good team, but the probability of them selecting a bad team is less than 10%) YC mentors these teams ideas by making the best people in Silicon Valley available to these teams so that they can pivot and re-work on the most probable idea which may succeed Expected Outcome to Founders: Conservatively 50% of YC funded Startups would be back to the point of their starting (Zero returns for the effort invested both for the founder as well as the investors) Some Founders may even have negative returns in Health, Relationship and sometime financially. Extected Outcome to YC and the World in Large: Even less than 10% hit a home run, they have extra ordinary returns and the world becomes a better place hopefully because of realization of new ideas. What does this tell me, this tell me that there is no relation between Ideas and the extra ordinary results which every founder is look towards, then why waste time looking for a needle in a haystack. As a startup founder who identified a big pain (Fragmentation of Operating Systems for Applications to be developed on - It does not make financial scence to develop the same functionality three or more times) about 2 years back and started working on a solution to solve my own pain, i have come to the conclusion even after solving the problem, financial success will not come easily by just working on a Idea. But Working on this Idea made me understand how to get success. Just follow in the footsteps of the YC. What does YC do, it enables and guides others start on the path of founding a startup and takes a % if you succeed. Since the returns are extra ordinary, even if a few succeed they win. A example: Any developer can just start doing Minimum Viable Prototype (1 to 3 months effort for a capable person) for any interesting idea for 1% non dilutable equity return (!Don't spend any effort after MVP and don't ask for money to do the prototype!) which others are interested in pursing for a mythical return. This is equvalent to emulating YC and may have a better return on effort. Of course if all the people whom you sponsor are duds, your expected return will be zero which is also what YC is solving, If their luck is so bad that they don't have home runs, they would have wasted their money, where as you would have enjoyed trying to solve interesting problems even if they have failed and in the situation your MVP becomes a Instagram. Your 1% is 10 Million dollars. All the above are assumptions which i am planning to verify (But not a a developer but as a Micro Angel) and hope to see what will happen. If you earn based on Effort you are an employee, if you earn based on the value created by your Effort you are a consultant or most of the current startups, but if you earn based on other peoples effort willingly parted, then you are true scaleable startup which has a higher probability of success. If your idea can make others succeed in what ever they do, but there is a link to return based on their success of their idea, the probability of making extra ordinary returns becomes possible. AirBnb succeed because it is an idea which makes others monetize their living space. YC succeeds because YC shows the path to wealth generation for founders even if 50% of founders fail. Last point is about Idea about Pets which pg assumed is a bad idea. My take on it is (I have no domain expertise on this), Pet Foods is a multi-billion dollar business, i know there are many pet food stores selling pet food, i also know that the pet food suppliers are multi-million dollar corporations. If i create a simple Mobile Pet Food Cataloging/Ordering/PreOrdering system (a 3 months effort) and give it away free to these pet food stores for giving to their customers and collate all these data and can sell the viewing of this data to the pet food supplier, I have a just in time inventory replenishment system. So many inefficiencies can be remove by asking the customer to preorder pet food. You remove overstocking, managing discounts. You effectively become the middle man between the Pet food supplier and the Pet Food store/Customer. I am not saying that this is a good idea, but just rejecting an idea because pets.com was a flop is not the correct way to go about it. You should deeply think about any idea before discarding it. A disciple of pg giving an alternative viewpoint.

bernardom 14y ago

If the we assume the hypothesis is true (that exposure to real-life business problems generates the best startup ideas), wouldn't it follow that management consultants have tons of great business ideas? I mean, if I want to maximize my exposure to "seeing the same problem crop up over and over in similar industries," that's how I'd go about doing it. Are there good examples of "former consultants who decided to start a company building the tools they used to make for every new client?" RJMetrics is the only one that comes to mind. (This is not a loaded question; I was one and am in that place now. My potential cofounders and I are engineers but not developers; that's a barrier but not insurmountable)

graeme 14y ago

Only tangentially on topic, but I imagine someone here knows the answer: is there currently an Airbnb for cars? AirBnb lets you monetize your spare housing capacity for rent. Congested cities are full of cars with spare capacity that isn't being monetized. I'm not the only one that's noticed this. Someone will eventually try to use smartphones + ridesharing to use this spare capacity. Is anyone doing it at present?

18pfsmt 14y ago
I know of two, but I can't think of either name right now. One of them presented at TC Disrupt in NYC back in, I think, 2010.
- portman 14y ago
  GetAround
pemulis 14y ago
Lyft, Sidecar, Ridejoy, Tickengo, Reward Ride, Avego, Carpooling.com, RelayRides, and a bunch of other ones.
nja 14y ago
RelayRides comes to mind.
frabcus 14y ago
In the UK, WhipCar

novaleaf 14y ago

from the article, pg: "Whereas the activation energy required to switch to a new search engine is low. Which in turn is why search engines are so much better than enterprise software." is that last sentence a joke? if yes, i think it is too subtle, a lot of dry sponges would soak it up. if it's NOT a joke... ummmm... wtf?

aaronbrethorst 14y ago
The cost of switching from Google Search to Bing Search (or whatever) is typing in a different address in the address bar[1]. The cost of replacing your multi-million dollar CRM solution is, obviously, millions of dollars. [1] ok, not really, but you get the idea.
- novaleaf 14y ago
  yes i agree with your statement and actually pg's entire article, it's just the " Which in turn is why search engines are so much better than enterprise software." which is throwing me in a loop. maybe i'm taking it out of context, but anyway, seems i'm the only one, so nevermind ;)
lubujackson 14y ago
I think the point is that competition is much more fierce for search engines because they have no lock-in. Enterprise software can get by with all sorts of warts because people simply can't get rid of it even if they want to.

damian2000 14y ago

Great read. I don't think PG addressed this in his essay, but I was wondering about the fear some startups have - whether their idea may be easily rolled into the product of an existing encumbent. E.g. I read below someone's startup idea is for a new type of movie rating system ("because 5 stars just isn't good enough anymore") - but couldn't this be easily wiped out if an encumbent like IMDB just rolled the idea directly into their rating system.

jamesjyu 14y ago

Many huge businesses have been built by solving seemingly mundane problems. The thing is, many of these mundane problems turn out to be big looming issues that represent huge inefficiencies in an industry. Businesses are willing to pay lots of money to solve these problems, especially if it makes them more efficient or profitable. This spurs on a thought that I've had about the position of entrepreneurship and human society. The cohort of startups are all hard at work solving problems that consumers or businesses run into. It's like the human collective organism that is constantly evolving to become better, stronger, and faster. Startups are the seeds of the experiments that could become a business that makes a huge impact to the organism. Imagine how much more efficient the world is with Google, for example! If all businesses and founders were to take pg's advice here, the practical (and important) problems in society would be solved at a much more dramatic rate.

sidcool 14y ago

"Live in the future, then build what's missing." This hit home run.

greenranger 14y ago

In the spirit of this article, I would like to point out something broken with pg's essays (which are otherwise excellent) -- the footnotes should appear in the right margin beside the paragraphs that reference them. Its unlikely a reader will continuously scroll up and down to read them, and by the time the end of the article is reached they have lost all context. The essays on grantland.com are a good example of this done well.

SeoxyS 14y ago

I think it comes down simply to: don't set out to make a startup. That's the wrong mind set. You shouldn't be creating a startup for the sake of creating a startup. You should be setting out to solve a problem, and somehow happen to turn that into a startup along the way.

srid68 14y ago
Exactly and this is what i said in my comment in a roundabout way. You should solve problems which interest you and not even think whether that will become a startup. If you want to create a startup, then you should think of solving other peoples problem and not your problem.

vadimoss 14y ago

An online Art Gallery in 1995 is not a bad but rather a premature idea for that epoche. It's a norm for the Art to be a decade or so behind the technology world. No wonder Google launched this idea with Google Art Project in 2011, which is more appropriate as far as timing concerned. How about the lost art gallery? http://galleryoflostart.com http://galleryoflostart.com @PG - you are just ahead of the crowd. Timing and luck are two ingredients of the same origin. Good timing is essentially luck:) On the other hand hard working is a guarantee of success if the "good timing" component presents.

nicholas73 14y ago
Try reading "The 15 Million Dollar Stuffed Shark"... basically the art market is smoke and mirrors. The dealers actually don't want a website, as that would reduce their mystique and commoditize their wares. A small local dealer might be convinced to sell online, but as one shop owner said to me on this: "don't bother".

pknerd 14y ago

I liked Matt Cuts way to find a problem and solve it. Worth reading http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/business-ideas/ http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/business-ideas/

skdoo 14y ago

1. Thinks "I really need X... why doesn't it exist?" 2. Domain expertise in X 3. Thinks "I could build X!" 4. Actually builds X The intersection 1+2 occurs often, and 1+2+3 more recently. 2+3+4 are fun for hacking. A PhD thesis is 1+2+3+4, but with a very limited 1. The startup I'm at (my first) is the first time I've worked on something that strongly intersects 1+2+3+4.

alenam 14y ago

pg's essays are so true and correct that I could practically cry.

matteodepalo 14y ago

I'm wondering if the reasoning that you should build a startup based on your own needs is applicable to ideas that have already been solved abroad and will not be imported in your country for some time. We don't live all in the Silicon Valley and people feel the same needs all over the world. Let's take the Stripe example. I live in Italy and I would use their product right now. Too bad they are not here and will not be here for quite a long time I foresee. Is it a good idea to create a startup that solves this need NOW for Europe? PayMill thought it was. The same for Netflix; in Italy (and most of Europe) we don't have a single decent service for renting movies online. Sometimes I feel I should build a service like Netflix here, but what if Netflix comes here 1 year later? It would probably crush my service.

melvinmt 14y ago
Yes and no. While cloning a service in a different geographical area may be profitable and successful on the short term, it's never going to be a Facebook or a Google on a global scale. It's like opening up an Italian restaurant in a small little town that doesn't have an Olive Garden yet. If that's the kind of business you want to be in that's fine, but it's not the high-growth kind of startup that many of us are trying to build. It's "just" a cash cow.
- matteodepalo 14y ago
  I tend to feel this way as well about clones, however your example IMHO doesn't really catch the problem. If the Italian restaurant is very good and aimed at a selective audience it can win against a big brand that aims at everyone. Of course they can only win if they don't try to clone an Olive Garden. The problem here is not making something small to beat a giant competitor, it's to build something exactly like a service you know to be very very good for the purpose of having it now. Indiegogo is a good example for this; they are like Kickstarter and offer a very good service to Europe. Considering Kickstarted wont be here for a long time I think they caught a good opportunity.
qznc 14y ago
On the other hand, when Netflix comes 1 year later, they might just buy you. If not they will probably have a hard time adapting to regional issues. Italian consumers are probably subtly different to US consumers. This friction also works in reverse, though. As a startup you have a hard time to get the deals with the movie industry, while Netflix already has the connections.

known 14y ago

In globalized world, sell first, build later

justplay 14y ago

whatever you said pg,its true. I completely agree and should work on problem which we are facing. We is more natural to realize where we missing to provide solution and in what way. @pg, why dont you upgrade your design ? You have so much money . You can hire best designer . If you say,i can contribute my design to you .

kokey 14y ago

The comment about the social network for pet owners made me think of this, which actually turns out to be quite a good idea I think: http://abovethecrowd.com/2012/11/13/our-most-recent-marketplace-investment-dogvacay-from-los-angeles/ http://abovethecrowd.com/2012/11/13/our-most-recent-marketpl... "DogVacay is an online marketplace that links dog owners with passionate dog care providers who open up their own home as an alternative to the traditional cage-oriented kennel."

ajju 14y ago
I am a huge fan, advocate, and frequent user and host on DogVacay - actually we are hosting a dog right now. DogVacay is not a social network for pet owners, nor do they seem to want to be one, thankfully. DogVacay is really good at one thing - finding me dog owners who can take care of my dog better than a random professional kennel (and usually for less money). They are a marketplace disrupting the unsexy kennel business by taking advantage of the subtle facts that almost no dog owner likes kennels, most of them would trust another dog owner more than one, and that many dog owners (and even people without pets) and their dogs would actually enjoy hosting someone else's pet for a few days. I don't even do it for the money.

nadam 14y ago

"For example, a social network for pet owners. It doesn't sound obviously mistaken." It is not obvious so much that actually there are several social networks for pet owners with apparently hunderds of thousands (registered) users. There is one even in Hungary where I live (only 10million people live in Hungary), but here are some english sites also: http://webtrends.about.com/od/socialnetworks/tp/pet-social-networks.htm http://webtrends.about.com/od/socialnetworks/tp/pet-social-n... Yes probably this is not a huge market, but some people make some money off of this. So, yes, it is totally not obvious what startup ideas are good or bad.

chmike 14y ago
PG's analysis has a bias for Dropbox or Facebook like ideas which are true startups and VC's dream. Of course there is plenty of room between idea for startups and idea for minimum viable businesses.

timmillwood 14y ago

I'm really bad at thinking of ideas, even thought about setting up a site to crowd source ideas, but didn't want to get into all the copyright and intellectual property issues.

nazgulnarsil 14y ago

All the sexy problems I think of are illegal to solve.

wslh 14y ago

" The prices of gene sequencing and 3D printing are both experiencing Moore's Law-like declines. What new things will we be able to do in the new world we'll have in a few years?" An OkCupid for best genetic matching?

gopi 14y ago
genepartner.com

jfdimark 14y ago

As usual, an excellent and well articulated essay from pg. Just a couple of thoughts on the paragraph about finding non-organic ideas. If you're a developer and in need of an idea, I couldn't recommend highly enough to attend industry conferences (in any industry). Over the day or two you are there, you will hear speakers tell you the problems they face, hear which are the repeat questions asked from the audience, and have a chance to talk with delegates about their biggest problems and why they are attending (what are they trying to find out). I rarely leave a conference without several obvious pain points facing the industry jotted down. If one of them inspires you, sounds interesting, feels familiar etc. then that could be your start-up idea. Most of these could be 'eaten by software' I'm sure, so they would be ripe for a developer to tackle. You could even find your domain-specific co-founder there too - 2 birds, 1 stone! Another place to look (and possibly cheaper and involving no travel) would be sites like twitter, quora, linkedin etc. where large numbers of users can ask each other questions or complain about some pain they have. You could look for trends and see if that sparks any interest.

Spectral 14y ago

Right now I'm currently 21 years old and I've had quite a few organic ideas pop up before which I took the time to brainstorm a little about, sometimes even creating a little website for them. I've shown to many of my friends my aspiring entrepreneur-ish spirit and many of them support my ideas, but I'm still at a standstill over here. I personally feel that the main problem I'm going through is that the college I chose to go to is subpar, to the level where it does not produce many people with "dreams." Everyone around me are just lazy people who like to party, so unless I spend all day trying to go to other campuses to talk to people, I find that I rarely get to experience an intelligent conversation about tech, career goals, and whatnot. Has anyone ever encountered this and have any advice for me? I go to Cal Poly Pomona and have many smart friends (from highschool) but they go to schools like UC Berk, UCI, UCLA, etc.

speric 14y ago

This essay made me purchase "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". A few pages in and I am glad I bought it.

tarice 14y ago

>So if you're a CS major and you want to start a startup, instead of taking a class on entrepreneurship you're better off taking a class on, say, genetics. Or better still, go work for a biotech company. CS majors normally get summer jobs at computer hardware or software companies. But if you want to find startup ideas, you might do better to get a summer job in some unrelated field. THIS. The field of CS has so many people in it, it's difficult to find an idea that somebody hasn't already implemented in 4+ languages. If you branch out into other fields, you become infinitely more valuable to said fields, plus the problems in other, not-as-programming-saavy fields become readily apparent. I know it's been repeated elsewhere, but as a chemical engineer I feel obligated to spread the word.

earroway 14y ago

In my case 1. Source of ideas: How to I make my everyday life simpler? 2. Filter criteria: Will I pay for this, if so how much?

lifebeyondfife 14y ago

This has given me a little shot of confidence. I've just finished my first mini-site with potential revenue stream. From the few places I've marketed it thus far, not many have really "got" what problem I'm trying to solve. But it's a problem I genuinely have and am thrilled to have a solution to it. I just need to find the others who'd like to drink from the well. (Well idea: as I've gotten older I no longer care to keep up on all music related media and there are too many bands I like releasing music I don't want to miss. I've made a service that allows you to keep track of releases from your favourite artists chronologically so you don't miss out on any.)

animal 14y ago
This sounds like something I'd be interested in. Link?
- lifebeyondfife 14y ago
  Cheers, currently working on some write-ups for my blog about how I - as a pure desktop/server developer - found my first web project. http://whatsnewmusic.com/ http://whatsnewmusic.com/

deleted 14y ago

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cs702 14y ago

FWIW, it's not just pg who has pursued one of those "sitcom" ideas that seem good (but really are not) before pivoting to make a different product that solves a real problem. Before Microsoft, Bill Gates and Paul Allen built and tried to sell a hardware product (!) called the Traf-O-Data. The device processed raw data from roadway traffic counters and printed out human-readable reports for traffic engineers. Luckily for the two budding entrepreneurs, they were unable to close the first sale, leading them subsequently to pivot into making Basic interpreters for microcomputers.[1] -- [1] http://startup.nmnaturalhistory.org/gallery/story.php?ii=45 http://startup.nmnaturalhistory.org/gallery/story.php?ii=45

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mattmaroon 14y ago

I don't think I'd define Facebook or Google as something "few others realize are worth doing". Facebook launched around the same time as a score of social networks, so lots of people realized it was worth doing. People also realized search engines were worth doing (Google was probably not even among the first 20 launched) they just didn't realize Yahoo was beatable. Or how lucrative they could be.

lubujackson 14y ago

Good essay. My trick is to realize that humans simply cannot produce ideas, they can only refine them (whether or not that is true doesn't really matter). By thinking that, the only option you have is to LISTEN for ideas and spend all your time trying to whittle down what you hear to something that has a nugget of interest. And then if you worry that idea in your head 4 times as long as a normal person would, you are bound to get to an interesting place with it. I'd recommend that even if you don't want to make a startup because it makes the world a more interesting place to be.

tolos 14y ago

consciousness raising: > When searching for ideas, look in areas where you have some expertise. If you're a database expert, don't build a chat app for teenagers (unless you're also a teenager). Maybe it's a good idea, but you can't trust your judgment about that, so ignore it. There have to be other ideas that involve databases, and whose quality you can judge. Do you find it hard to come up with good ideas involving databases? That's because your expertise raises your standards. Your ideas about chat apps are just as bad [emphasis mine], but you're giving yourself a Dunning-Kruger pass in that domain.

joeag 14y ago

If you're not sure if there is a pain you are solving, try the Nail it Then Scale it cold call test. Cold call 10 target customers and briefly describe what you think their pain is and how your solution eliminates it. Usually you will have to leave a voicemail. If you don't get at least 50% return calls, you haven't identified a pain bad enough to support "a 2 person startup that nobody has ever heard of with a rudimentary solution" - which is what you will be!

michaelochurch 14y ago

I think what makes startup idea generation hard is that humans suck when it comes to low probabilities. We don't have the intuitive tools to differentiate between 0, 0.000001, and 0.001, because we never needed them in our evolutionary frame, but in massively multi-agent systems like markets, those distinctions matter.

GoldiKam 14y ago

Super awesome, Thoroughly covered post

barce 14y ago

tl;dr Work on what you think is cool. Are you all applying for YCombinator? There's so much effusive praise for Paul. ;) He mentions 3 basic factors: the founders want it, they can build it, and it goes un-noticed. "Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook all began this way." I agree with this premise, and he backs up the 1st point really well. The 2nd point isn't really worth arguing. Ya, you've got to have product. What was disconcerting to me was that he went after the pet websites. It made me laugh a bit. As someone who used to work for Dogster.com and Catster.com which were both successful niche websites that were profitable and sold to "Say Media," I'd have to say no to this: 'The danger of an idea like this is that when you run it by your friends with pets, they don't say "I would never use this." ...Sum that reaction across the entire population, and you have zero users.' Zero users is simply false. Dogster.com still has the kind of usage that isn't the home run Paul is looking for in his investments, but it is sustainable. The 3rd point about not-noticing has two excpetions: Hegel and PayPal. Let's stick to the second. Elon Musk noticed it from the very start as a competitor running what was then also a payment system known as X.com. I think when he added his startup DNA into the mix, although it led to an employee revolt and his ouster, it made PayPal stronger. This is where Hegel comes in: the dialectic of history is a pattern that can be seen everywhere, even in startups, but that's another blog post.

avk 14y ago

> "This is an instance of a more general rule: focus on users, not competitors. The most important information about competitors is what you learn via users anyway." I found this to be the strongest way of saying don't obsess about your competition. Focusing on users will probably help address other issues as well (i.e. working on the wrong problem, building the wrong thing, not making as much of an impact as you could be, etc).

josephlord 14y ago
And I would agree with both of you but you do need to be better at something for someone than your competitors. You don't need to be better at everything or everyone but there needs to be a reason to use you rather than your competitor for at least a subset of people..

xkiwi 14y ago

Amazing that how every essay PG written can shows you the ideas. -You have to be a founder to found, who you are defines what you can do. -just another founder at work

brianpan 14y ago

> [4] This gets harder as you get older. While the space of ideas doesn't have dangerous local maxima, the space of careers does. There are fairly high walls between most of the paths people take through life, and the older you get, the higher the walls become. Ain't that the truth. This footnote stung a bit. Take advantage of the flexibility of youth!

is74 14y ago

My method for generating startup ideas is notice the things that I hate. For example, I hate shaving, and would kill for a device that I can stick my face into and become clean-shaven one minute later. I also hate choosing the shower temperature -- I want the shower learn the temperatures I like. I also hate not knowing the definition of terms in government websites. I can't stand passwords. Etc. This feeling is my indicator of a good potential startup idea.

genuine 14y ago

"The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas." That is the best thing I've ever read from PG. But I would say, "Ideas lead to action, and only action builds a startup. Ideas upon ideas lead to ideas, not a startup."

j45 14y ago

One thing I believe is that if something is revolutionary, it's going to be revolutionary without you having to say it. This essay made me feel a little unsettled. It described things I find myself doing (solve small problems and let them grow) for the sake of solving problems, which hasn't been popular with all the people working on being revolutionaries in my life. After I read Startup = Growth, I felt I read the YCombinator Manifesto, and so much clarity packed into an essay where most others replace one set of confusing concepts with their own. Together, I think this essay speaks to something bigger that I've believed in. You are the only, and most important start you'll ever work on. learning to learn, recognize, focus on and solve the right kinds of problems is what will make all of the difference. After reading this essay, I get why YC focuses so much on a person's tenacity. I could apply with any of my ideas that mostly live in the future, are useful, functional, valuable, and most of all, simple and obvious. I didn't know if I could belong in an accelerator, but, just for the personal mentoring alone for becoming a better creator of what's missing in the future, I'd do it to just be around the conversations.

OafTobark 14y ago

Post states Jeff Bezos couldn't hack, he graduated in EECS according to wikipedia and a few other sources noted he was a CS major.

flyinRyan 14y ago
That doesn't mean he can code.
- OafTobark 14y ago
  Nor does it mean he can't

deleted 14y ago

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zio99 14y ago

I'm curious: where would Pinterest be on this graph? If Microsoft was for a few 1000 users, and if the best ideas are "organic," would Pinterest be bookmarking naturally "evolved" or did it pivot to a website for curation, sharing with like-minded individuals more recently [1]? It seems to me what's more important is tackling an emerging field (like Microsoft did) than a declining one (which some "organic" companies may do if they are too late into the game). Also, what do you guys think? Do the "sitcom ideas" have it easier with raising money, and finding their niche after? [1] Read Ben's email here: http://spectralight.com/myblog/2012/11/09/the-secret-is-exposed-on-pinterests-secret-boards/ http://spectralight.com/myblog/2012/11/09/the-secret-is-expo...

jonnycowboy 14y ago

I'm surprised a great source of ideas hasn't been mentions: Google search suggestions. For example, try typing "build android apps" (don't hit Enter). Hundreds/thousands are looking for how to make apps with: no programming experience, or easily or with another language eg: python). Good market to be in!

aufreak3 14y ago

"..coming up with startup ideas is a question of seeing the obvious." I got a wake-up call from my 5yr old that felt like this. He pointed up and said "look". I asked him "what is it?" ... "tree!". I bit my tongue humbled. I wish to be able to see the "trees of ideas-in-waiting" like he does and not take the status quo for granted.