Notes: How To Get Startup Ideas

These are my notes from PG's article: How to Get Startup Ideas

There are two "meta" ways of getting startup ideas: Consciously and organically.

The conscious way is to ask yourself: "What is a good startup idea ?". Unfortunately, doing so is difficult because you will mostly get bad ideas that sound dangerously plausible. However, if you need to, you should:

• Look in areas where you have some expertise. This way, you can filter out bad ideas quickly and honestly. Otherwise, you fall into the Dunning-Kruger effect.
• Look into things you need (and pay for). For instance, when you think to yourself: "If someone made X, I would buy it in a second"
• Ask around you what is missing in their world.
• Look for unsexy, tedious problems.
• Look for expensive things that are getting less expensive (e.g., 3D printing). In other words, look for trends and waves.

The other method is the organic method; using it instead should be a no-brainer.

However, this approach requires preparation and serendipity.

Preparation is:

• Time: Nothing will happen if operational work is drowning you
• Money: No money means a tight deadline, which makes the "organic" way not well suited
• Motivation: The thing that will make you work on your startup instead of procrastinating
• Living in the future: This is the most important. You need to put yourself into the future and live it every day. It's a fantastic way to ride an upcoming wave, tailor your vision for the future, and notice what's currently missing.
• Noticing instead of thinking: Stop looking for it but stay alert for itches, abnormalities, and things that are more difficult than they should be.
• Remove the filters
  • Sexy: Stop chasing the next Twitter
  • The big company: Start small with a very active set of users. Then find a way to exit this niche for a bigger market.
  • Crowded: Crowded means two things, there is a need, and this need is not solved by a perfect solution (otherwise, there would be a monopole)
  • Hard: By looking for the complicated topics, you will either solve a real problem or telegraph to a more straightforward, annex problem to solve

Serendipity is a boosted kind of luck. A piece of luck emerges only in particular conditions; in our case, that will occur when you work on complex problems, ideally in a rapidly changing field.

Just build things and constantly take a step back to notice what is missing.

In any case, organic or conscious startup ideas must be something founders sincerely want, something they can build, and others do not realize it is worth doing. In other words, when a startup launches, there have to be people that want it urgently.

You must be able to answer the following question: "Who wants this so much that they'll use it even when it's a crappy version one, made by a two-person startup they've never heard of?"