10 ms·

Ask HN: Let's crowdsource a startup idea

5 points by adamzerner 12y ago

I like to break problems into their components. What happens when you do that to the problem of, "How do you create a successful startup?"? The way I see it, you need to have an idea for something that people genuinely want(1) and you have to be able to build it(2). Traditionally, the idea part grows organically, or comes from thought and research from one person or a small group of people. But what about having a large group of people brainstorm startup ideas? Could that produce better results? Let's try it! 1 - And that could be provided with sufficient profit margins, and that is defensible etc. 2- This could be broken down much more. Ex. get a team together, raise money, do research, acquire relevant skills...

adamzerner 12y ago
Idea: a marketplace for startup ideas. Users submit ideas for things they'd pay for (ex. I'd pay $100 for simple earbuds that don't break, I can wear while working out, and that don't get tangled up). Other users vote to confirm that they too would pay for that, and enter their email address to be notified if someone implements it. Someone who wants to start a startup could browse through the ideas, and have the option to pay for that list of customers. If this happens, the person who started the idea would be compensated, to incentivize people to contribute ideas.
smt88 12y ago
I love the brainstorming, designing, and building stages of product development, but this is a very misguided thread. Startups shouldn't start with ideas. They should start with markets. Ideas mean nothing if you don't have an unusually inefficient way to sell the products that come out of them.
- adamzerner 12y ago
  Don't ideas take that stuff into account? Ie. isn't the market and the ability to build and sell the product part of the idea? I can't imagine an example where it isn't. Like how could you make the following statement concrete: "I have an idea for a startup but don't know who would want it and don't know how it could be built or sold". Granted, you could say things like, "time travel", but those clearly aren't startup ideas. To me, for it to be considered a startup idea, it must at least try to address these things. If not then let me be clear that I intend for that to be part of the discussion. After all, when you break down the question of "how do you build a successful startup", those are things that have to be addressed.
  - smt88 12y ago
    > Don't ideas take that stuff into account? Ie. isn't the market and the ability to build and sell the product part of the idea? Ideas take that stuff into account, but "the ability to build and sell the product" are not part of the idea. For example, I have a friend in the accounting industry. She says that tracking time spent on each client is still a huge pain point. Many firms do it with Excel spreadsheets, and some of them even use email. I have an idea to solve that problem. I know how to build app, pitch it, and support it. The obstacle is that I only have that one friend in the accounting industry. I could get her firm to use it, but I don't have any particularly special ability to convince the rest of that antiquated industry to modernize itself. I learned this same lesson with a restaurant startup years ago. Unless you have very easy access to lots of prospective clients, you should never start a company to target those people. (I'm talking about B2B above. The situation is a little different for B2C products, which just require tons of capital and a reasonable user-acquisition cost for that type of product.) There's a reason investors are always talking about "unfair advantage", and that always means people. Being cashflow-positive is a game of pushing down your costs (for acquiring and serving users) and pushing up your per-user revenue. The two factors that influence those metrics the most are your team and your access to the target market. A great team means that your sales move quicker, your product-development process is shorter, and you need fewer people. Access to your target market means that cash comes in sooner, sales cycles are shorter, and sales are bigger. So when I say that startups should start with the market, I don't mean someone should say, "X market really needs Y product." I mean someone should say, "I know a bunch of executes in the [X] industry, and I can meet any one of them tomorrow."
    - flashman 12y ago
      > "I know a bunch of executes in the [X] industry, and I can meet any one of them tomorrow." This is how we operate in our B2B. Talk to forty potential clients and find the problems at least several of them have in common. Then reduce the list of problems to the ones in your domain, that require relatively little customisation per client, etc. I make it sound very simple; in reality you end up customising for each client, getting bogged down in maintenance, fielding feature requests that the rest of the client base won't require, etc. Running a business, in other words!
- smt88 12y ago
  I wrote "unusually inefficient way" in my original comment, but I meant "unusually efficient". Seems like OP understood what I meant, though.

5 points by adamzerner 12y ago

adamzerner 12y ago

Idea: a marketplace for startup ideas. Users submit ideas for things they'd pay for (ex. I'd pay $100 for simple earbuds that don't break, I can wear while working out, and that don't get tangled up). Other users vote to confirm that they too would pay for that, and enter their email address to be notified if someone implements it. Someone who wants to start a startup could browse through the ideas, and have the option to pay for that list of customers. If this happens, the person who started the idea would be compensated, to incentivize people to contribute ideas.

smt88 12y ago

I love the brainstorming, designing, and building stages of product development, but this is a very misguided thread. Startups shouldn't start with ideas. They should start with markets. Ideas mean nothing if you don't have an unusually inefficient way to sell the products that come out of them.

adamzerner 12y ago
Don't ideas take that stuff into account? Ie. isn't the market and the ability to build and sell the product part of the idea? I can't imagine an example where it isn't. Like how could you make the following statement concrete: "I have an idea for a startup but don't know who would want it and don't know how it could be built or sold". Granted, you could say things like, "time travel", but those clearly aren't startup ideas. To me, for it to be considered a startup idea, it must at least try to address these things. If not then let me be clear that I intend for that to be part of the discussion. After all, when you break down the question of "how do you build a successful startup", those are things that have to be addressed.
- smt88 12y ago
  > Don't ideas take that stuff into account? Ie. isn't the market and the ability to build and sell the product part of the idea? Ideas take that stuff into account, but "the ability to build and sell the product" are not part of the idea. For example, I have a friend in the accounting industry. She says that tracking time spent on each client is still a huge pain point. Many firms do it with Excel spreadsheets, and some of them even use email. I have an idea to solve that problem. I know how to build app, pitch it, and support it. The obstacle is that I only have that one friend in the accounting industry. I could get her firm to use it, but I don't have any particularly special ability to convince the rest of that antiquated industry to modernize itself. I learned this same lesson with a restaurant startup years ago. Unless you have very easy access to lots of prospective clients, you should never start a company to target those people. (I'm talking about B2B above. The situation is a little different for B2C products, which just require tons of capital and a reasonable user-acquisition cost for that type of product.) There's a reason investors are always talking about "unfair advantage", and that always means people. Being cashflow-positive is a game of pushing down your costs (for acquiring and serving users) and pushing up your per-user revenue. The two factors that influence those metrics the most are your team and your access to the target market. A great team means that your sales move quicker, your product-development process is shorter, and you need fewer people. Access to your target market means that cash comes in sooner, sales cycles are shorter, and sales are bigger. So when I say that startups should start with the market, I don't mean someone should say, "X market really needs Y product." I mean someone should say, "I know a bunch of executes in the [X] industry, and I can meet any one of them tomorrow."
  - flashman 12y ago
    > "I know a bunch of executes in the [X] industry, and I can meet any one of them tomorrow." This is how we operate in our B2B. Talk to forty potential clients and find the problems at least several of them have in common. Then reduce the list of problems to the ones in your domain, that require relatively little customisation per client, etc. I make it sound very simple; in reality you end up customising for each client, getting bogged down in maintenance, fielding feature requests that the rest of the client base won't require, etc. Running a business, in other words!
smt88 12y ago
I wrote "unusually inefficient way" in my original comment, but I meant "unusually efficient". Seems like OP understood what I meant, though.