[HN Gopher] A summary of my learnings on how to find startup ideas
___________________________________________________________________
A summary of my learnings on how to find startup ideas
Author : Lior539
Score : 88 points
Date : 2022-10-13 14:16 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (liorn.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (liorn.substack.com)
| fisian wrote:
| This reminds me of innovation management [1], but done by
| individuals (founders) instead of existing organisations. The
| wikipedia article links some more techniques, including some of
| which are in the post like brainstorming.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Innovation_management
| contingencies wrote:
| IMHO the last thing innovation needs is management.
| _pete_ wrote:
| My startup idea is a browser extension that corrects "learnings"
| to "lessons".
| tabtab wrote:
| It's "learnificationism", -George W. Bush
| BWStearns wrote:
| I giggled a bit at "war" being a new thing instead of basically
| the oldest thing (yeah I get what they meant but still).
|
| I think regulatory opportunity is often under-appreciated. Very
| subtle, boring things can move a business model or technology
| from impossible to insanely valuable.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| While innovation and trying to find start-up ideas is very
| praiseworthy, why not just trawl through the last YC Startup
| Directory list and figure out what might fit your particular
| favorite domain, with some modification?
|
| I guess that if you came up with some completely novel idea, say
| facetiously, some cyrpto-subscription knock-off of flappy bird
| where you play against others. I can almost guarantee that if it
| showed any kind of traction, somebody out there would copy it
| either directly, or similarly enough. Then, if they get the
| execution down better than you, that's their start-up company
| taking off.
|
| It's the whole red ocean/blue ocean analogy - there's more good
| ideas out there already, badly executed, that are just waiting
| for you to pick up and do better.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| Great ideas are everywhere! But you don't need good or even
| great ideas to make a startup, you need something that a VC
| will fund and that a big corp will acquire. Analyze that field
| and surf the gradient.
|
| Find whatever huge entity with lots of cash is throwing that
| cash around and figure out how to make something that the cash
| will stick to.
|
| Over the years it has been Autodesk, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco,
| Softbank, etc.
| nthacker wrote:
| At first glance this sounds like genius but its not
|
| YC or any successful VC doesn't fund ideas. There is something
| else the founders have figured out which is key to success and
| funding. This could be a distribution trick, a key insight, a
| user growth metric.
|
| Its not hard to imagine YC or a VC coming across the same idea
| pitched by different founders. Why they picked the team they
| picked cannot be obvious from trawling the startup directory,
| that insight is hidden, its literally a secret that should be
| guarded
| achillesheels wrote:
| Because that is an abstract way of solving problems. One needs
| to _feel_ the pain of the customer to gain necessarily greater
| "domain" expertise in intuitively perceiving conditional
| possibilities which are _necessary_ in producing value, or
| regenerative feedback gain in the human system, e.g. society.
| rodolphoarruda wrote:
| > an unmet need of someone else.
|
| I found this to be very productive, especially when I'm able to
| speak to senior managers who know exactly what the problem is;
| what is holding their performance at a lower level.
|
| Their reaction is always pragmatic saying what they need and,
| believe me, at what cost.
| hardwaresofton wrote:
| You could also just let me send them to you:
|
| https://unvalidatedideas.com
|
| I think the regulatory changes area is quite under-explored.
|
| In the end though, a clear visualization of the customer is key
| --- how can you actually _find_ the person that will buy your
| product?
| jjk166 wrote:
| Trying to come up with an innovative idea out of the blue is a
| fools errand - the odds of you being the first person to ever
| think of something are low to begin with, the odds that you will
| do so in a field you have no experience in and that this unique
| idea will also be a good one are astronomically low. That the
| idea is both good in its own right and also something you have
| the passion and skill to tackle is substantially less likely
| still.
|
| I think the best strategy is to just pick an area you know you
| generally enjoy working in, and start building a copy of
| something that already exists in that space. As you go along you
| will inevitably run into the same problems that others previously
| faced, and at some point you're going to find some fork in the
| road where everyone went one way but you think it's worth trying
| the other, or you will find some problem that everyone in the
| space has been dealing with that you could fix. Unlike high level
| ideation, in this scenario when you find an idea it will be
| something that you are already an expert on and passionate about
| solving, and the value of such a solution would be immediately
| clear.
| achillesheels wrote:
| I would further mentioned that by being a late comer, one can
| actually _gain_ in what others have learned form their
| mistakes, to enter at a _better than conceivable_ market
| position. This is the principal doubt an investor ought to
| consider when beginning a new venture: will the motion I put
| into the markets grow or decay? And certainly, it is simplified
| to invest in a market where there is actually demonstrated
| value in there being n >1 competitors.
| Lior539 wrote:
| Hi folks! I've been searching for new startup ideas and problem
| areas to tackle. Here's a summary of my learnings on how to do
| it. I'm sharing it with you in the hopes that you'll be able to
| point out what's missing and help me fill in any gaps
| tabtab wrote:
| In the past few years when ideas are requested on Hacker News,
| plenty are provided. I'll link them if I can find them again.
| There's a lot of itches to be scratched in tech. "Dynamic
| Relational" would be nice, for example. Many want dynamism
| without having to throw out all their existing RDBMS/SQL
| knowledge to switch to NoSql (to get dynamism).
|
| We also need a stateful GUI markup standard/browser/pluggin to
| reduce reinventing GUI engines via JavaScript + DOM. (Best to
| open source it, but charge for logo usage, certification, etc.
| Your site would be the de-facto reference documentation, and you
| can put ads on it.)
| nate wrote:
| Another way I like to look at this is to define Innovation in a
| bit of a different way then most people think about it. If you
| think about Innovation as simply "removing steps from a process",
| it's a playground for all sorts of ideas.
|
| In a nutshell, take any process at all. Maybe something you do a
| lot. Or something you have some vested interest in. Or something
| that you aspire to learn. Really break it out into its nitty
| gritty step by step details. Now mull over where you see steps
| that can be removed or combined. That's what most of the time
| people get really excited about. E.g. "They used to have to do
| these 7 things to order a cab, and now its just these 3 things"
|
| Concept is described really well in this book:
| https://www.amazon.com/Something-Really-New-Creating-Innovat...
| Lior539 wrote:
| That's a great tip! Thanks for sharing nate. I'll have a look
| at the book too
| LouisSayers wrote:
| I'd define it a bit more generally as a reallocation of
| resources that results in a higher yield.
|
| You may not exactly remove a step, but simply adapt it - e.g.
| self-checkout.
|
| I'm sure there must be some examples where an innovation added
| steps - e.g. the takeoff checklist for pilots.
| achillesheels wrote:
| I'd define it as necessarily causing greater physical
| efficiencies of human motion or human action per circadian
| periodical cycle, where high-tech causes necessarily >10
| efficiencies in coordinating human action for achieving the
| same goal.
| dr-neptune wrote:
| Another useful idea in this same quest is to keep an ideas file
| that is easy to update. Then hold yourself accountable to add at
| least 1 idea a day, no matter how silly.
|
| Over time you will find yourself dredging up all kinds of ideas
| without meaning to (while doing other things) and before you know
| it you will have a long list that can then be prioritized and
| explored
| acuozzo wrote:
| I like this, but my issue is that the ideas I have are
| exceptionally hard to vet since I'm such a weirdo1.
|
| My dream would be to start a so-called "micro-startup" selling
| B2B software for $10+K/month in revenue.
|
| I have the technical skills and, even though I'm rather far
| removed from the business unit of my company, I have some
| decent ideas (I think...).
|
| How do I figure out if HR/recruiting would want/need my
| idea(s)?
|
| [1] _I spend my free time archiving Laserdiscs and writing
| software for improved NTSC post-processing._
| makestuff wrote:
| Yeah I have no desire to build the next stripe, but if I
| could have a nice one person SAAS company that replaced my
| salary that would be the dream. However, it seems like the
| issue is if you do not keep scaling someone else will come
| along and do it at a larger scale to beat you on price
| forcing you out of business.
| dr-neptune wrote:
| One way could be to time cap something and put it out there.
| Many may fail, but perhaps one will take off. Here is a blog
| where a dev makes many small startups and sees how they do:
| https://tinyprojects.dev/
| jeffclark wrote:
| > How do I figure out if HR/recruiting would want/need my
| idea(s)?
|
| My best advice is to try to make the sale, even before you
| have something ready. You'll learn what parts of your pitch
| are connecting with them, and which are confusing to them.
|
| But more importantly, you're going to understand if you get
| the problem as well as you think you do. And you're going to
| understand if they like your solution to that problem as much
| as you hope they do.
|
| So, email a few of these potential customers. See if they'll
| take a call with you. If none do, you're not there yet. But
| if even one does, you're about to get a ton of information in
| 30 minutes. Good luck!
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-10-13 23:01 UTC)