I'm definitely not an advocate of "big ideas" but I do think people need to shoot higher than yet-another-twitter-app. There's a middle ground, where stuff lik

I'm definitely not an advocate of "big ideas" but I do think people need to shoot higher than yet-another-twitter-app. There's a middle ground, where stuff like Basecamp sits. Not "enterprisey" but also not just a bullshit re-tweet bot. And passion definitely won't take care of everything, but it will solve the motivation problem, which I think is the biggest problem that a nights & weekends company has. You still need to find customers and all that, and while passion helps, so too does having a useful, viable product. I would suggest trying to get outside of the HN geek echo chamber. Ignore Twitter, the iPhone, and all the other hot stuff right now and try to find an area or group that's totally underserved on the web. Ask friends, girlfriends, family, etc. for ideas on things they hate about the Web. In my case, my wife found that small plant nurseries are stuck in like 1996 when it comes to the web, so we started http://doleaf.com http://doleaf.com Sure, it's not super-sexy, but it solves a real problem for these people, and they're willing to pay for it.