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Actionable Ways To Get Startup Ideas

60 points by 147 13y ago

TelmoMenezes 13y ago
What's the difference between "Actionable Ways" and plain "Ways"?
- rgbrgb 13y ago
  "Copy a feature on Craigslist" vs "make something people want".
- mindcrime 13y ago
  Specificity, mainly. Specific action you can take right now, versus generic platitudes that apply at a very general level.
- JackFr 13y ago
  ac·tion·a·ble ˈakSHənəbəl/ adjective 1. giving sufficient reason to take legal action. 2. able to be done or acted on; having practical value. Up until about 10 years ago, it was nearly exclusively used in the first sense. The second sense was popularized by pop-business gurus promoting with proactive dynamic enterprise synergistic actionable best-practices...
  - tsotha 13y ago
    Yep. I still laugh at the 2nd usage. When I went to school this headline would have meant "Ways to get sued getting startup ideas".
digitailor 13y ago
I've never met a successful entrepreneur who sits around trying to come up with business ideas. At the risk of sounding negative and grumpy, groan. Another one of these blogadoodoos. What follows is my $.02, some might disagree. From what I've seen it goes "I have experience in this area" -> "Wow there are under-served market needs here" -> "I have some relevant experience to start a company that addresses it and can attract talent" -> startup. Not "I'm a wannabe entrepreneur" -> "I have no domain specific expert knowledge" -> "let's randomly find something we guess people care about and overspecialize" -> start coding blindly or find a Rails dev on Odesk. Seen that one fail innumerable times. One other thing. If you have to go searching for ideas, you probably have no business experience. Let's say you manage to find a good idea using something like the techniques of this blog post. You manage to secure some funding. The startup starts to do well. You then become a sitting duck to be ejected by your investors, as you've built the product, but are inexperienced in business, and they specifically will want you out for that reason. An exception to this is incubators like Y Combinator, who are more concerned with team chemistry than idea. If they weren't buying the concept but want to give you a shot, they might stick your team on an idea other than yours. But they probably already have an appropriate idea in mind, they don't have to go hunting. Another possible exception is Stanford MBAs, specifically. So much advice on blogs. Be careful.
- ellumiakat 13y ago
  This, yes, a thousand times. Building a startup is gruelling and I wouldn't be doing it at all if I hadn't had such an urge to fix a problem I actually faced/was angry about and saw that no one else was fixing it.
  - manuelflara 13y ago
    The thing is, everyone reads the news and thinks they can come up with some alright idea and make a few million in a couple years. Most of them don't know how hard it is because they've never done it.
- ruang 13y ago
  Amazon.com counterexample - Jeff Bezos was a VC before he started a bookstore.
  - amirmc 13y ago
    Bezos worked in finance (hedge fund) before starting Amazon. He was not a VC.
    - digitailor 13y ago
      Exactly- that can be seen as CFO qualifications, a background that I think primed him for Amazon well. Amazon is a CFO-type idea- small margins, obscene volume, financially micromanage the infrastructure. To call Amazon a bookseller is missing their entire raison d'etre. Bezos wanted to be King of Volume, and how much of their current revenue is books? Can you imagine Barnes and Noble starting BNWS? As a hedge funder he'd be looking for secure, smaller returns through diversification. Sound anything like Amazon's business plan?
    - dsl 13y ago
      The brilliant part is Amazon doesn't make money directly by selling books, they make money by not paying for books until they are all sold (so publishers are effectively floating them interest free loans for every new title). A perfect example of finance domain knowledge.
levlandau 13y ago
The only upside to "looking for startup ideas" is that it is better than sitting and doing nothing or watching 13 episodes of house of card on netflix for example. The key is to not commit to an idea that was generated in this essentially random manner. Treat such ideas as "projects" where your main objective is to learn. Perhaps do a few in parallel. Experience naturally follows and then real ideas can spring forth. The mistake is to "come up" with an idea and then blast full steam ahead when there is no basis for real conviction.
trevoro 13y ago
You don't ever seem to find startup ideas. Startup ideas seem to find you. That's why it's important to always be listening - if you listen often enough then problems will "appear out of nowhere" and you'll be in a good place to understand their potential.
- johncole 13y ago
  I thought the author made a good point though, actually said what you're saying. This is just if you are in a pinch or need to pivot. I thought it was a good article, wish he had written a little more,

60 points by 147 13y ago

TelmoMenezes 13y ago

What's the difference between "Actionable Ways" and plain "Ways"?

rgbrgb 13y ago
"Copy a feature on Craigslist" vs "make something people want".
mindcrime 13y ago
Specificity, mainly. Specific action you can take right now, versus generic platitudes that apply at a very general level.
JackFr 13y ago
ac·tion·a·ble ˈakSHənəbəl/ adjective 1. giving sufficient reason to take legal action. 2. able to be done or acted on; having practical value. Up until about 10 years ago, it was nearly exclusively used in the first sense. The second sense was popularized by pop-business gurus promoting with proactive dynamic enterprise synergistic actionable best-practices...
- tsotha 13y ago
  Yep. I still laugh at the 2nd usage. When I went to school this headline would have meant "Ways to get sued getting startup ideas".

digitailor 13y ago

I've never met a successful entrepreneur who sits around trying to come up with business ideas. At the risk of sounding negative and grumpy, groan. Another one of these blogadoodoos. What follows is my $.02, some might disagree. From what I've seen it goes "I have experience in this area" -> "Wow there are under-served market needs here" -> "I have some relevant experience to start a company that addresses it and can attract talent" -> startup. Not "I'm a wannabe entrepreneur" -> "I have no domain specific expert knowledge" -> "let's randomly find something we guess people care about and overspecialize" -> start coding blindly or find a Rails dev on Odesk. Seen that one fail innumerable times. One other thing. If you have to go searching for ideas, you probably have no business experience. Let's say you manage to find a good idea using something like the techniques of this blog post. You manage to secure some funding. The startup starts to do well. You then become a sitting duck to be ejected by your investors, as you've built the product, but are inexperienced in business, and they specifically will want you out for that reason. An exception to this is incubators like Y Combinator, who are more concerned with team chemistry than idea. If they weren't buying the concept but want to give you a shot, they might stick your team on an idea other than yours. But they probably already have an appropriate idea in mind, they don't have to go hunting. Another possible exception is Stanford MBAs, specifically. So much advice on blogs. Be careful.

ellumiakat 13y ago
This, yes, a thousand times. Building a startup is gruelling and I wouldn't be doing it at all if I hadn't had such an urge to fix a problem I actually faced/was angry about and saw that no one else was fixing it.
- manuelflara 13y ago
  The thing is, everyone reads the news and thinks they can come up with some alright idea and make a few million in a couple years. Most of them don't know how hard it is because they've never done it.
ruang 13y ago
Amazon.com counterexample - Jeff Bezos was a VC before he started a bookstore.
- amirmc 13y ago
  Bezos worked in finance (hedge fund) before starting Amazon. He was not a VC.
  - digitailor 13y ago
    Exactly- that can be seen as CFO qualifications, a background that I think primed him for Amazon well. Amazon is a CFO-type idea- small margins, obscene volume, financially micromanage the infrastructure. To call Amazon a bookseller is missing their entire raison d'etre. Bezos wanted to be King of Volume, and how much of their current revenue is books? Can you imagine Barnes and Noble starting BNWS? As a hedge funder he'd be looking for secure, smaller returns through diversification. Sound anything like Amazon's business plan?
  - dsl 13y ago
    The brilliant part is Amazon doesn't make money directly by selling books, they make money by not paying for books until they are all sold (so publishers are effectively floating them interest free loans for every new title). A perfect example of finance domain knowledge.

levlandau 13y ago

The only upside to "looking for startup ideas" is that it is better than sitting and doing nothing or watching 13 episodes of house of card on netflix for example. The key is to not commit to an idea that was generated in this essentially random manner. Treat such ideas as "projects" where your main objective is to learn. Perhaps do a few in parallel. Experience naturally follows and then real ideas can spring forth. The mistake is to "come up" with an idea and then blast full steam ahead when there is no basis for real conviction.

trevoro 13y ago

You don't ever seem to find startup ideas. Startup ideas seem to find you. That's why it's important to always be listening - if you listen often enough then problems will "appear out of nowhere" and you'll be in a good place to understand their potential.

johncole 13y ago
I thought the author made a good point though, actually said what you're saying. This is just if you are in a pinch or need to pivot. I thought it was a good article, wish he had written a little more,