While there are clearly bad ideas, Facebook for robots is probably one, there are lots and lots of great ideas. I always tell people my 'real' startup idea is

While there are clearly bad ideas, Facebook for robots is probably one, there are lots and lots of great ideas. I always tell people my 'real' startup idea is time travel, but I'm still working on the implementation. Often these great ideas are hard. PG has an essay on this (http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html). Better search is a clear example. Google is amazing, but it isn't perfect. Yet being better than google is really, really hard. I think one of the tricks of being a founder is to pick the greatest idea that you are capable of implementing, with the caveat being that picking something that you are capable of implementing right now is probably too conservative.