Time: I recently left my job. (in this economy?! yup)
Skill: I'm proficient in Django, system administration, a bit of scaling, but not so much front-end / design.
Money: I'm not talking retirement fund here, but my expenses are "tiny" and savings (for my age) are "high".
(I really don't want to imply I have a _lot_ of the above. I don't think I'm a "Rockstar" [I hate that as much as you do]. I'm not trying to say I have all the time and cash in the world. I just want to explain my situation.)
I don't have,
An idea I'm passionate about
Someone else to work with
A better physical location (I'm in Dallas right now, but that also helps the money part above)
I've been out of school and doing Django development for ~3 years, the development was fun but the app/idea itself was never my passion (I was just an employee, by the way). My plan when I left my job ~3 weeks ago was to do self-study and decide what I wanted to do (by which I probably mean: who I wanted to work for). I've given myself until March, where I figured I could find some leads at PyCon. I've been catching up on books, blogs, projects I wanted to look into - but I haven't found anything to work on that really takes my time. Nothing that keeps me up at night.
I can certainly fill my time until March just doing the self-study thing with no specific goal in mind, but I feel like I'm missing an opportunity. Especially reading about the other guys here who saved to a specific goal so they could quit and do their thing. I'm there already, and time is ticking down.
I guess one easy-mode answer is: "Find another startup you could be passionate about". I agree, I'm in a perfect situation to take a dive with other people, except for my location. Anything is possible, I guess, but lets just say that I'd like to stay in Dallas for the next few months. How are my options affected in that case?
Is this too vague? Whiney? Should I be sad/ashamed that I don't have a list of ideas I want to work on?
I'm just sort of confused, and seeking your advice.
I've been in a pretty similar situation recently. I quit my day job in May, wanting to pursue my own projects. For two months, I worked on my own projects, releasing something new every week or two.
That was fun and I learned a bunch of new things, but in retrospect it wasn't the best way to spend those two months. I had planned to start looking for consulting work in month three, so I started emailing and calling people, arranging meetings, and putting the word out at geek gatherings.
A funny thing happened. I started hearing a lot of great project ideas, some of which were potentially paid jobs and others which were just cool hacks or proto-startups. And these came not just as spark of inspiration but with a person, or sometimes a small company, that actually cared about getting it built. It took longer than I expected to actually get paid -- almost a month; it turns out consulting contracts aren't that dramatically easier to sell and execute than getting hired to a regular job, so plan on lots of slow interpersonal cycles -- but in the meantime I was amply supplied with great projects and some good partnerships. Many of these are on my back burner now, behind the work that pays well but dominates, and I mean DOMINATES, my schedule. On the bright side, timing my every minute has dramatically increased my stamina -- I can do a lot more work in a day than I ever have before. This will come in handy with whatever I do.
Anyway, here's my advice: start looking for consulting work immediately, and try to get quickly to a point where you can pay your living expenses on 15 billable hours a week. By the way, you might think this is "not even two full time work days", but let me assure you that when you can't count lunch, news.yc, stupefying meetings, etc. against the clock, this will feel like a huge work load. Do not promise anyone 20 or more hours a week until you have tested your capacity; there's a lot you can optimize, and you will.
The regular consulting work will help you develop discipline, improve your stamina, and keep you in touch with people. In your spare time, which again you should try to preserve, do whatever projects draw your fancy. Get in the habit of soliciting ideas at parties, from family friends, etc. and see where you can take them in your spare time. Then when you find one that works for you, and some people who might make good partners, deploy the rest of your cushion (the one you didn't spend because you were paying your living expenses off of consulting) and take the plunge.
I hadn't realised that mturk requests could only be made in the US. I was planning on using it to save myself a little time in a side project I'm working on. A quick google search turns up ways around this though.
http://www.hit-builder.com/ offers a way around this problem for a $25 setup fee and 5% of use. I'm not familiar with mturk or this service but I suspect operating costs aren't that high. A barebones / follow on competitor could be a nice side project if you aren't concerned about amazon destroying your business model at some point in the future.
I was in the same position as you: I wanted to try mturk myself. That way I noticed that you have to be in the US. I did not investigate the matter further. Thanks for finding hit-builder!
Sounds like a great position to be in. Seriously though, I think you have the right idea of taking time off to LEARN. It is so critical.
To echo some of the other commenters, I would recommend two things.
1. Learn what you're passionate about. What kind of applications do you want to build? In what capacity do you want to be involved in your next company (employee, CTO, CEO, etc.)?
2. Learn from smart people. Email 20 people you look up to. Ask to have a 20 min conversation over the phone. Be bold! You might be surprised how helpful people are.
The current changes in economic conditions may swing the pendulum back in favor of a subscription (vs. advertising) model for web apps.
There are 7 million small businesses in the United States. Every one of them needs something. They are everywhere.
Start networking. Let everyone know what you do. Before you know it, they'll be coming out of the woodwork saying things like, "We sure could use <xyz>. Do you know of any way we could get it?"
If you can't find a promising idea and a way to get started on it in 30 days, then maybe you shouldn't be an entrepreneur.
I think this is the right general idea, but asking customers what product they want is not usually the best way to get product ideas. Customers often don't know what is possible; it's better to find out what is difficult for them and design a solution yourself. I'm not saying you shouldn't listen to customers, but don't rely on them to tell you what to build.
No one is born with brilliant ideas. A professor of mine once said, "If you don't think you have any good ideas, lower your threshold for what you consider good."
Take any idea (even a bad one), and plan out how you'd implement it. Rinse and repeat over time. Eventually you'll start getting better ideas, and seeing opportunities where you see problems.
Um, lowering your threshold for what you'll let yourself think, is one thing. If anything, I would suggest raising your threshold for what you consider good enough to implement.
My advice would be to find a creative cofounder instead of relying on yourself to come up with the idea. Straining your mind too hard will probably just produce something me-too that won't really work.
Seconded. Obviously you don't want to work on crap, but keep in mind that Google was supposed by many to fail based on the existing maturity of the search market:
http://www.bvp.com/Portfolio/AntiPortfolio.aspx
Some of the ideas you've tossed aside were wins.
For that matter, just start writing down every idea you have, whether you think it's good or not. Keep track of your batting average. Keep track of the kinds of things you were right on. Obviously a long-term trending thing, but probably useful at some point in your future.
From my experience writing every single new ideas down really helped have more ideas and better ones too...
I feel that just the act of writing them down forces you to think more about finding great ideas...
I agree with the parent. It sounds to me like you might be in a rut. Check out Time Magazine's 100 Best Novels Since 1923 and borrow a few from your local library. Giving your brain a break from tech grind might help you see things from new perspectives and give your neurons room to fire up some interesting ideas.
Absolutely! Take a week or two to drive someplace you've never been, alone. The time spent staring at scenery with your hands on a steering wheel may stir up some creative juices.
Yeah, sit and watch the world go by. Let something - anything - spark an interest and just follow the vibe. You'll soon discover something you hadn't known before and find yourself in a preferred position to that in which you are now.
* Find somebody to work with. Do freelancing. See what makes freelancing difficult for you or your clients. Figure out a way to do it better.
* If freelancing is a no-go, use web sites. This is what I did when I first wanted to launch a site. Visit every one you can. Sign up for all of them. Make notes of what works well, what really doesn't work at all. When you find a particular TYPE of web site that doesn't have any good models going for it, make your own alternative.
That kind of idea is no alternative to having a Great Big Plan, but it lets you mess with things, stay active, and it means when you DO have your Big Idea you have both a little more expertise for launching and you have users who might be willing to spread the word.
On that note, try to find locals who are interested in code/technology. See what interests them and see how it may relate to what can interest you. Share ideas and see where they go!
walk through your next week and carry a notebook, making a note of all the things you think of that you wish existed, but don't. when i do this, it's generally through little irritations, conveniences that save me 3-4 minutes, realizations about people's work process -- that kind of thing. go fishing in the real world. do this until an idea for a product hits you. it will, and likely soon: something you want or need that no one provides.
in the meantime, get into a startup, on an equity basis. look for contribution to the work, not a paycheck. learn the atmosphere, see what works and what doesn't. get involved with your local user groups and search for a partner, someone like-minded.
put down the tech for a bit and read. spin down the head for a bit. my best ideas happen when i'm not thinking about them.
it's really a question of the want-to. if you have that, you'll be okay.
One of the best things you can do is get connected and get involved. Check out http://www.texasstartupblog.com, it's ran by Alex Muse and he's in Dallas... they're doing their own mobile startup: http://www.biggu.com. Reach out to him and see how you can get involved, and monitor the blog...
In Austin, checkout StartupDistrict.com, AustinStartup.com, Austin Tech Happy Hour, Conjunctured(.com) Co-working, and a lot more.
Totally second this. Find your local hubs for entrepreneurs, tech people, inquiring minds etc, and get involved. You don't need to be hung up on the concept of having your own Big Idea, and it's great that you aren't. There are plenty of startups out there who would welcome someone like you - I know I would, if I was in the right country. Not sure of the situation in Dallas but here in the UK hanging around universities is a good way to meet people with ideas but little practical experience.
Learning is great too. As others have said, if you find an itch to scratch, you might end up working on an idea without even realising you've had one.
At the risk of sounding totally clueless, how do you find local hubs like that? I live in the twin cities in MN, and all that I know of is the ruby.mn ruby group, which is pretty talkative on the ruby list. Is there some online startup community that's arranged by region, or do you just have to know the right people?
Get in touch with John Erik Metcalf. He's starting a seed incubator in Austin, and I'm sure he can introduce you to some stellar companies in the area.
Refresh Dallas usually has good turnout; topics are a mixed bag for a non-designer, but entrepreneurial people, in general:
http://www.refreshdallas.org/
In general, I look at new forms of identification, communication, and connection. The network is the overwhelming source of value, and any way to translate between meatspace and online is worth thinking about.
Fundamentally, what will excite you to work on depends on you. A great idea to me may not be to you. What do you care about? Why? What problems are there around those things?
Start a side project -- just get it out the door, projects have a way of morphing into glorious things that become what you want them to be and provide happiness. :)
+1 for this. Just start building something. It could be a forum, a blogging application or a project management tool. Just start to build it and the idea will come to you. In the meantime you will improve your Django skills even more.
phpBB sucks because it's free. There's much better forum software out there: most sites that don't want to be sucky use something like vBulletin, and they do a pretty good business off it.
If you're getting into the forum business, you shouldn't compare yourself to free software like Phorum or phpBB, because they don't make any money. Instead, compare yourself to for-profit forums like vBulletin, Invision Power Board, or UBB. That space is pretty crowded, and the bar is pretty high.
I find it a pain in the butt, but I have no better ideas.
Well, I have, but they rely on more than I can code and I can't see myself convincing others of their value.
I think there could do with being a much better instant messenger for small businesses - something like a cross between a wiki with a desktop client, an instant messenger, a voice messenger, a tasklist, and that program that lets several people edit a document at the same time.
A sort of project management app that is nothing at all like Microsoft Project. A kind of virtual desk that you can all jot notes on and is fast and responsive.
With a nice interface it could be a kind of intray/outbox/message passing/task management/project management system.
As you can see, it's not very well developed idea, but the pains it would address:
- Email is crummy for keeping multiple people on track. Lots of redundant forwards, tendency to large trails of messages
- Instant Messangers are fiddly to open, find someone, open a conversation, type, wait, annoying to the other person to be interrupted.
- Wikis are useful but using them in a web browser and with several people working on it, they're clunky and sluggish.
- There's no good way of asking questions and getting answers in a central way. e.g. I email Alice and ask for details of X, her reply is in my inbox, Alice emails Bob and his reply is in her inbox, Alice forwards to Eve who forwards to me, my reply is in Eve's mailbox, she forwards with comments to Alice...
If that could be centralised, a central per-project question repository...
What are you interested in?
When you're doing the things you love to do, what parts of them are the least fun/biggest pain in the butt?
what do you wish you could do?
Answer any one of those questions with technology and you have the start of an idea and I bet you'll be surprised where it branches from there.
I'm in the same position (good skills, adequate cash, no job - but no idea or cofounder) and am thinking of resolving it by either:
1.) Getting a job at a big Silicon Valley tech company or
2.) Getting a job at a YCombinator startup.
One thing I learned from my past failed startup is that ideas come from interacting with the world around you, they don't spring fully formed from your head. Either one of the above options puts me in contact with more potential ideas - I'd meet more people at a big tech company, but I'd do more things at the YC startup. They'd also get me out of the house and into an environment with lots of people interested in startups.
I've also found that it's really hard to build a network or feel out a cofounder once you already have an idea that you're passionate about. That relationship has to be forged under a low-stress situation, and then you jump into the fire with them. ;-) So now may be a good time to work on that, if the environment allows (I've heard it's a really terrible place to start a tech company).
I'm pretty good at front-end design with CSS, XHTML, JavaScript (mootools/jQuery). Our skills might compliment each other?
I'd be down to grab a beer with you sometime to plot the dethroning of Google for YC summer '09 or something. jfornear[at]smu[dot]edu or jessefornear[at]gmail[dot]com
I don't mind working for someone, I just don't want to go work for X-Large-Corp, which is most of what Dallas has to offer. Hence the self-study and bettering myself so I can apply somewhere more interesting AND/OR do my own thing.
Do it now! You're young, you're flush with cash, and you have no responsibilities. This is the perfect time to travel. If you don't go now, you will never go.
Ignore all other advice in this thread. Technology is boring. You probably aren't going to want to tell your grandchildren about the web2.0 sheep-thrower that you built when you were 25, but you'll definitely want to tell them about the time that you hiked through the Andes, rode a camel in India, and slept with a beautiful girl in Greece.
I second the trip advice. Do it on the cheap too (backpacking / developing nations) in order to stretch your budget and therefore time off. Take your laptop and spend a set number of hours everyday learning / working on the tech stuff you want. Relax the rest of the time and get the creative juices flowing.
If you want you can also do what I did and combine the too by going to live in cheap south east country (currently malaysia) and work there/study there... It's cheaper living expenses compared to us and when you live in a foreign country for some time (as opposed to just travelling) you get a better feel for the country and its people (which might give you ideas too!)
b) Do some contracting. This will help you meet people and get your first taste of the business world. Learn to sell yourself, it should be much easier than selling any product. You also learn how to manage expectations, people and products.
c) Start making products. They don't have to be big, be groundbreaking, but start making things and learn to make things well. Probably the first few things you will make won't turn out how you would like and you will learn some valuable lessons.
d) Hopefully along the way, meet some other people who you can talk to and possibly work with. Sometimes you get lucky here, but you have to get that ball rolling.
e) Along the way you will find something you are passionate about building. Build it.
I understand where you are coming from, and I would like to share what worked for me. I just finished university, and have been in 3 startup situations so far, none of which have gone anywhere. That's not to say I didn't learn some very valuable lessons. In fact, I learned things in these failed startups that I might not have learned any other way. In addition, I am still alive, and stronger for having walked through the fire a few times.
I think the most important thing for someone like you is to start generating momentum. Let me explain how you might go about this.
1. There is no mistake, only make.
Build stuff. Fail. Just make sure you fail quickly and cheaply. If you actually bring an idea to life you have succeeded no matter what happens. You will have seperated yourself from everyone else who has ideas but never acts. Ideas are just ideas if no one does the tough, painful work required to actually execute them. Like a young piano prodigy the more you can practice actually building stuff the better you will get.
2. Go to events.
Talk to other entrepreneurs/programmers/designers about what they are doing. Ask lots of questions and learn. It's tough to learn anything if you never keep your mouth shut.
3. Learn about business.
I realize some people on this site are code-centric, but in reality it's only one piece of the pie. You will be better off if you read and understand what makes good businesses tick. Everything from branding, copy, and positioning to pricing, business models, and marketing. It helps to learn all of it. I would be happy to recommend some great books if you contact me.
4. Start learning about what people want.
Try and understand what makes people use particular web sites. Is it speed? ease of use? unique design? Copywriting? Branding? Or did the site take an old idea and put a unique spin on it? Perhaps you can take elements of certain ideas and combine, bundle, or package them in new ways.
This is getting way too long, but I hope anyone who reads this gets some value from this post. Feel free to contact me anytime. I would be glad to share any of the information or resources I have gained from years spent learning from advisors, mentors, books, blogs, and anyone at anytime.
Don't fret about finding The Big Idea (or even not having a List of Possible Big Ideas to choose from).
I'm sure you get small ideas now and then. When you do, don't think about them too much, just jump on them, especially if they're small enough to finish in a couple of days. Something Bigger might grow out of one of them. If not, hey, it still beats spending that time watching TV or reading Reddit.
You must have at least one friend who thinks sort of the same way you do. Bounce silly ideas off them. Create a mindset - for both yourself and for them - where you look at everyday activities and events through the perspective of "what can I do with this?", and chat with them about ideas regularly.
Work on building up your personal brand equity. In less buzzwordy terms, build up your social network, become known for your opinions, and develop an audience of some sort. Gary Vaynerchuk's videos are worth watching on this topic - http://www.garyvaynerchuk.com/
I follow a lot of people on Twitter who aren't working on a specific idea right now, but when they do, you can bet I'll be checking it out and cheerleading for them! The same applies for those following me. Become known, get us to follow you and enjoy what you have to say, and then when you DO get "that big idea" you'll actually have some users and publicity out of the gate :)
With that said, if you /do/ have a Twitter account or whatever, link us up! But your blog only seems to have one post..
Yeah, this is something I'm working on. You've reminded me to fix my blog index - I meant to hint at previous posts without just doing a huge dump of entries.
That said, I just set it up after I left my job, and I haven't really started. I just have three mostly pointless posts (mostly for myself) to get the ball rolling. I'm definitely more tech side than entrepreneur (so far?).
The way to have ideas is to understand the field really well. That sounds kind of banal, but I haven't seen anyone approach startups this way explicitly.
So, I would study history of technology and of money, and especially recent history of computing and the Internet. Then I'd try to simulate it all in my mind, and try to see patterns. and think of all the alternative ways in which it might have happened. What were the good ideas of any given time? Which of them were inevitable? Which of them relied on timing? By what chain of reasoning could they have been foreseen?
I don't really know if this would help. It's a big undertaking, and I have other stuff to do now, so I haven't tried it.
Enjoy this phase! Idea generation can be a lot of fun. Get some books to stimulate. I've gotten a lot of mileage from "A Whack On The Side Of The Head" and "Creativity" (Csikszentmihalyi). Watch some TED talks. Go to your local unconferences and meet people and see what they're working on. Team up on those connections.
Share your ideas as they come. Record everything that comes to mind. Get feedback. Iterate.
Meanwhile, you can be educating yourself on the business side of things: starting a business, people/listening skills, presenting, marketing, etc. You're already here; that's a pretty good start. But books like "The Art Of The Start", "Founders At Work", and the Seth Godin variety are worth their weight in gold.
Ok, a strange ideea: if you want to do a startup but don't have an ideea you like, you can try something ourside IT. I did it for about a year (a local courier company). It failed, of course, but I learned _a lot_, about startups, about people, some about myself. And more importantly, one year later I have my passion about programming back.
Important stuff: don't sink too much money into it, and try to use it to make connections, not brake them.
I am in a surprisingly similar situation, except I, in addition, have the experience of a failed startup (was working on a friend's idea, not mine). I have a contract job that's ending in December, and then...
ok, step one skip the great idea thing. the reality is that the internet is a large enough for competitors in any market.
step 2 is build something you know well, it will make it easier to copy and you might find a few things to innovate on later. i have tried the big bold approach and i end up having to scale back my plans, its so depressing. Looking back i would rather be dealing with problems as i grow.
step 3 repeat
eventually you will find a team of people that are doing things that are interesting.
Make tech friends. There's bound to a bunch of people in Dallas that would like to team up with you. Go find them. They'll give you the ideas you need.
How about doing something pointless but interesting. For example, a self aware web app.
Anyways, I have a list of about 100 ideas, so here are two:
* A generic API to access bank data from banks all over the world
* A site where one can list all the people that one hates, and what one will do to them when one finally gets rich enough/powerful enough etc.
As I look at trying to start something myself, it's not the lack of "good" ideas that ever worries me (although if you tell someone you're interested in starting a company the first question they always ask is "what's your idea?"), it's finding the right partner or "someone else to work with" that seems to be the biggest obstacle. I'd rather have no ideas and a determined partner to work with, than 100 greate ideas and no way to execute.
To that point, I have one burning idea right now but have not landed on the right partner. Any interest in talking about it?
At least, you know that you are passionate about Django. So, try to do something with Django. Whatever web application that is based on Django. Or, you can try to contribute to Django.
Maybe trying working in a field that uses computers but doesnt program them? Sales person? Manager?
I would try to put myself in other peoples shoes and find the pain they have. That's how I come up with most of my ideas, think about what I'd like to be able to do, but cannot, due to technological constraints.
There are many many great people in industries/services that just haven't led them to be technologists. They might have everything you don't - which is key to building a great team.
Off the top of my head, you could make a nationwide collaborative blog for teachers/professors to voice their opinions and/or publish short educational pages. get some sponsors for it and funnel the money back into some kinda foundation/fund for the education community.
all of my ideas have been bourne out of experience. is there an industry that you like outside of web? my passion has been in real estate and it's led me to create a web app for real estate investors that solves many of their needs.
You don't have idea cause you already burn out of your passion, I guess.
If I were you, I won't stay in one location and think my next step. I might tend to join some conferences and traveling.
That's one way to do it. The only thing to keep in mind is that the trigger has already been pulled. Money (and thus time) have been decreasing every day starting 3 weeks ago.
I'm not implying you're saying this, but I hope I can nip the whole "you're an idiot for quitting without an idea" in the bud. I'm alright with just doing self-study and going to work in a "normal" place come next Spring, I just wonder if I could make even better use of this time.
I'm mainly saying don't rush into it. This is something you MUST be passionate about. Things WILL get tough. You WILL think about quitting no matter what you do. You NEED to have the passion for your product to want to do it through thick and thin.
As far as ideas to get passionate about, look into your hobbies and see if you can come up with something you'll enjoy. Or do you have ANY frustrations when using another site online? Do you have any features you want from other sites?
Just remember...it doesn't need to be rocket science.
Lots of good comments suggesting you focus on what you love and are passionate about.
But also ask what you hate; what makes you mad? It could be a little thing (e.g. why can't I browse the library of the DVD rental places in my neighborhood?) Is there a computing solution to that maddening thing?
