
Ask YC: When did you start having interesting ideas? - Alex3917
The other day I was trying to recall examples of specific interesting ideas I'd had before I started keeping an idea journal, which was around the time I went started college. The funny thing is that I really couldn't come up with much of anything. There was an essay that I'd posted on my homepage about an insight I'd had my freshman year of high school, but that was the earliest specific example of a non-trivial idea I could remember having. So I am still trying to figure out whether I just didn't start having interesting ideas before a certain point, or whether I did have interesting ideas but have just forgotten them all because I didn't write them down. I'm leaning toward never having had interesting ideas in the first place, but it's difficult to say. There seems to be a lot of cognitive research on ability to remember specific tangible events and routines from childhood, but not so much on ability to remember one's early ideas.<p>So how do I define an interesting idea? As a working definition, I'd say a prerequisite is that it's something novel. Maybe not totally unique, but at the least the kind of idea where you say, wow, I bet maybe maybe a few dozen or a couple hundred people have had this same sequence of thoughts before.<p>Examples: Seth Godin had an interesting idea the other day that as the price of gas increased and telecommuting became more common, the expectations for the quality of in-person interactions is going to increase accordingly. Nothing super complicated, just a simple cause and effect, but still I think it meets the minimum level for being novel and interesting. Seth comes up with a lot of novel ideas. Edge.org is filled with them.<p>I don't want to give any definition that's too precise though because I don't want my preconceptions to bias others. Other people obviously spend their time thinking about different stuff than me, so the set of things that qualify is probably larger than anything I'll be able to clearly articulate.<p>So when did you start having interesting ideas? What was the first non-trivial idea you ever remember having?
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edw519
You can have an interesting idea _any_ time. Problem is you may not even
realize that you just had an interesting idea when you had it.

The journal is an excellent idea. I write everything down. When I look it over
later, I'm usually embarrassed that I could have thought of anything so lame.
But every once in a while, there are a few gems in there.

I always have pencil and a small notebook next to the bed. The best time for
me to get good ideas is as soon as I wake up. The second best time is right
before I go to sleep. I carry index cards and a pen at all times during the
day, just in case.

The other important ingredient in good ideas is to get out there and
experience things. All the time. You never know which inputs will spawn ideas,
so get lots of inputs.

My best ideas have usually come when I see how something is and think, "There
must be a better way." Then I let it lie dormant inside and trust my "inner
self" to come up with something when I least expect it.

(My best hacking ideas ever came from the first time I saw a code generator.
Simultaneously I thought, "That is so cool!" and "It can be so much better
than that.")

~~~
paulsb
So very true. I think experience gives you the knowledge to recognise when
something can be done better because without it you just think that this is
the norm and how things are. Throw in a dash of frustration just before "there
must be a better way" and you have yourself an idea with determination behind
it which _is_ going to solve that problem.

I always have a bunch of paper in my back pocket for writing stuff down on the
spur of the moment and then I develop the idea as a mind-map, sleep on it, and
then develop it some more.

------
dkokelley
I was about six years old when I remember thinking to myself: I have a lot of
great ideas. All I need is an 8 or 10-year old to help me make them cause I'm
too young.

I'm sure the ideas weren't that great, but the critical thinking is more
important.

~~~
thwarted
I remember when I first "discovered" RLE, 8 or 9 years old, sitting in the
backseat of my parent's car in this parking lot:

[http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=41.764966,-87.724457&spn=...](http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=41.764966,-87.724457&spn=0.003161,0.00824&t=h&z=18)

~~~
listic
What is RLE in this case? Run-length encoding?

~~~
thwarted
Yes.

------
aggieben
I started writing ideas in blue books when I was very young (like 7 or 8).
Most were stupid, but a few were good at the time, and in fact later become
commercially available products. Of course, I always thought "Hey! I thought
of that first, but I'm eight and can't do anything about it".

I only did this sporadically (regrettably - not only would I have a lot of
ideas by now, but I'd have something humorous to look back at and/or give my
kids), but I started having lots more ideas toward the end of my undergrad
time and during grad school. My idea generation dipped for a while after grad
school because, you know, life gets in the way. But it has picked back up
again as my life has stabilized and I've started keeping a tiddlywiki of
ideas. Most bad, a few good. None brilliant.

First non-trivial idea? I don't remember. I think it may have had something to
do with a novel way of feeding cows or something like that (I grew up on a
semi-working farm). As if cows need a new way to eat.

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pierrefar
I've always found a lot of my ideas interesting; it's just that for most of
them I eventually proved them to be bad ideas.

Also, interesting ideas are rarely individual insights but usually come from
merging two or more different ideas in a new way to create something genuinely
cool.

~~~
Hexstream
"Also, interesting ideas are rarely individual insights but usually come from
merging two or more different ideas in a new way to create something genuinely
cool."

There you have it. It's hard to think of interesting ideas we had in the past
because we tend to think of ideas as atomic, but those kinds of insights are
pretty common and thus not so interesting, it's usually when you have a
complex set of inter-related ideas that something really significant and
interesting can emerge.

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pmjordan
I guess your definition of "interesting" shifts as you mature. I bet I had a
load of interesting ideas when I was 14 that I would no longer find
interesting now, 10 years later.

I think a lot of the ideas I had as a teenager were basically things I
discovered independently, usually in awkward or incomplete incarnations, but
would have been "obvious" to someone more educated and older. Or if not
obvious, at least fairly easy to research or look up. (linear algebra
particularly stands out as one of those things that, had I known it, I would
have saved myself weeks of effort)

I wonder whether I'd be better at what I do now if I'd had access to the
internet earlier (thus skipped a load of "unnecessary" hard work) or later.
(thus developed my capacity for independent thought further) Given my acute
case of "programmer's block" right now I'm leaning towards the latter. :-/

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sosueme
I was 4-5. I was drawing these grand fountains and water works systems and my
grandfather looked at one and saw that water was flowing uphill and explained
in basic terms gravity and the Archimedes principle to me.

After that I always wanted to be correct in my drawings so I got interested in
children science books. My mom read me kids science stories/tales. I preferred
them to fairy tales.

I was 9. I remember imagining how it would be cool if instead of cells my body
consisted of tiny robots that intermeshed together and substituted for various
bodily functions. Sorta like nano bots I came to learn about 15 years after

I was 10. it was 1988. Soviet Union. I kept drawing a small submarine with all
the life support, buoyancy and structural elements I could think of. I wanted
to swim from Chukotka/Kamchatka to Alaska

~~~
icky
> _I was 4-5. I was drawing these grand fountains and water works systems and
> my grandfather looked at one and saw that water was flowing uphill and
> explained in basic terms gravity and the Archimedes principle to me._

Good thing he wasn't M. C. Escher's grandfather! :)

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mynameishere
When I was 8 or 9 I came up with a basic design for a perpetual motion machine
(it involved little dynamos on a track, and a ball running back and forth over
them). No, I didn't use the term "perpetual motion machine". Anyway, I
explained it to my mother who said it wasn't possible.

Well, if I have a kid, I'm going to buy him some dynamos and tell him to build
that sucker.

~~~
ph0rque
A good friend of my father's reminisced about how when I was 6-7, I would show
him my notebooks full of perpetual motion machines.

------
ahsonwardak
When I started reading voraciously, I started having better ideas. Reading is
a conversation with an author. Most business and entrepreneur-themed books
don't offer new ideas, but they're new to you. When you swirl them around in
your own head, you'll have better ideas. For me, I always need to visualize
ideas to, so I paper prototype a lot.

~~~
Alex3917
"When I started reading voraciously, I started having better ideas."

I've noticed this too.

~~~
eru
Reading several books at a time - interleaving chapters - makes me see new
connections.

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sheriff
If you're efficient about coming up with interesting ideas, you'll come up
with a lot that are just outside the bounds of what's obvious, given your
current knowledgebase. When you're younger, not only is your knowledgebase
relatively small, but there have also been a lot of people with very similar
knowledgebases before you... the result is that that space is pretty heavily
tapped, and most of the "actually interesting" ideas you can have are well
known to more knowledgeable folks. Before you learn enough to have an
interesting starting point, the odds are against your getting interesting
results.

~~~
sheriff
In other words, there's at least factor beyond your control in having an
actually interesting idea: You can't control what's ultimately considered
interesting for its time.

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Shadow84
For me it's not only interesting when i started having ideas (probably because
I can't really remember) but also when I'm having "interesting" ideas...

For me it's mostly when I'm stressed out. For example when I was learning for
exams I very often had interesting ideas I started to dissect and analyze.
Even though the ideas were interesting and intriguing, I quashed most of them
because from a business perspective (and that is my background) I could see
the idea prosper. I too write most of my ideas down so I can use them later or
use them as inspiration.

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jgrahamc
I'm guessing around 10 years old (but perhaps even earlier) when I decided to
design and build a briefcase containing various hidden compartments.

I also remember, before that, reading Splinter of the Mind's Eye and being
impressed that Luke could recharge his lightsaber from Han's blaster and spent
a long time working on designs for universal plugs and sockets that would
allow arbitrary recharging between devices. I am still waiting for this to be
possible.

But well before that (say around 6-7 years old) I recall drawing devices (just
can't tell you what they did!)

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lpgauth
When I was 5-7 I would always take apart any broken electronic and try to
figure out what it did. Obviously, except for understanding the connection
between the parts, LEDs and switch most of the stuff didn't make much sense.

But my goal was to understand electronics enough to modify a cell phone, so I
could use it as a telephone jack that I could plug in a laptop (wireless 56k
modem). I though it could revolutionized the world.

Obviously this wasn't the best approach for this problem, but I was still
pissed when I saw the first wireless internet cards from Telcos.

------
Alex3917
So for me the specific example I was thinking of was this:

"it's damn hard to get into an Ivy League school. Even valedictorians and kids
with perfect SATs are rejected from their top picks every year. But athletes
got into the best schools even with mediocre grades...

Let's think about this logically. To get into an Ivy as just a student you
basically need straight A's, 1400 SATs, and lots of extracurriculars. This
meant I'd have to go to school eight hours a day, do two or three hours of
extracurriculars, and then go home to six or so hours of homework. As an
athlete A's and B's are fine as long as you don't have any C's, and you don't
need any major extracurriculars other than your sport. That's what the coaches
will tell you when you're being recruited at least, but in reality a couple
C's are usually fine if you just want to go to an Ivy but you don't much care
which. This would require going through the motions of being a student, and
then practicing a couple hours a day year-round. Same result, less work, more
fun!"

The logic behind this doesn't really make sense unless you're stuck in the
mentality of a zero-sum world. That said, this thinking seems to have been a
precursor of sorts to later and more interesting musings on zero-sum systems.

I can only remember a handful of specific ideas I had before that which I'm
still vaguely impressed with today.

------
TrevorJ
I honestly don't remember, but my mom swears I 'invented' the idea of a maglev
train when I was five or six. Although, according to the drawing I made at the
time, my solution for keeping the train on the tracks was to build walls on
either side, so I'm not sure how I expected people to board or exit the train
:D

~~~
brlewis
Typical train platforms are tall enough to keep a train on the tracks. Five-
or-six-year-old you may have had that in mind. Maybe you accidentally drew the
walls too tall.

[http://ourdoings.com/brlewis/photo.html?th=jx/sb/svx2.jpg...](http://ourdoings.com/brlewis/photo.html?th=jx/sb/svx2.jpg&d=2007-12-20)

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Andi
I started to have good ideas since I am inspired by games in the Kindergarten.
The same way I have ideas today. I feel that they are good and when I try to
think about it, I know why ... they are often new "Mashups" of existing
techniques and ways to do things.

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a-priori
Interesting ideas? I don't know, at least before age 8. I know that because at
that age I was drawing designs for flying machines based on something I heard
about a supposed link between electric charge and gravity... in other words,
either pseudoscience or taken out of context (high-energy physics, maybe?).

I realized this when I built an apparatus to test it: a crude Van de Graff
generator on a scale. I ran it for a while but despite building up a small
charge (it ran on a 9V battery), the weight remained unchanged. I was
disappointed.

Over time, my ideas have become more practical. Still, I occasionally have
urges to create a bipedal robot or a better coffee machine :)

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brandonkm
I've found that interesting ideas come mainly from current life experiences
combined with something that happened to you in your past. By this I mean
current inspiration (ex: weekend snowboarding trip) that brought about a great
idea for a product, then that idea is refined by your beliefs of what you feel
a great product should really be. These beliefs are mostly derived from your
childhood believe it or not. But most of all interesting ideas come from
finding interesting things in the day to day grind.

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markm
My interesting ideas in life always came when there were girls around I wanted
to impress. As I get older, they come not so often. I read that the most
inspired works of Romantic and Classical composers were all written before age
25 with a big exception being Beethoven's and Mozart's final symphonies. It's
believed the inspiration behind those symphonies was brought on by the
illnesses that killed them.

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puppetsock
When I started asking interesting questions. :)

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whacked_new
Could you point out some examples of this research? I guess it has something
to do with events and routines being episodic memories, whereas abstract ideas
is more of a metacognitive/executive task?

Actually, the ideas themselves would be declarative, if there were details
involved. Now I'm confused. Would like to read about.

~~~
Alex3917
I'm not really sure what area of research this would fall under. The closest I
can think of is "infantile amnesia," although that would be a stretch. As far
as I know there is no established way to classify ideas, so that would make
this a question not very well-suited for academic research. Actually, one of
the reasons why I asked is because I'm interested in looking for patterns in
what people consider to be interesting ideas. So far there are a lot of
parallels with the answers that people here have been giving for the "what
have you discovered" question, which is amusing, albeit not especially
surprising.

If you are interested in infantile amnesia though, this paper is kind of
interesting and gives a decent overview of the different theories:

Harley, K. & Reese, E. (1999). Origins of autobiographical memory.
Developmental Psychology, 35, 5, 1338-1348.

~~~
a-priori
According to my understanding of Piaget's developmental stages, the earliest a
child can have "inventive" thought is in the concrete operational stage.
Children enter this stage during school years, but before puberty. It's during
this time that children begin to grasp basic scientific concepts like
conservation of volume.

However, I didn't pay all that much attention in developmental psych, my
textbook isn't handy, and the Wikipedia article is not all that helpful. :)

~~~
Alex3917
Researchers have found that most of Piaget's milestones actually happen much
earlier than he had thought. Basically new methodologies have been invented to
simplify the questions so that children can show competence at an earlier age.
Before many children had been failing to perform at things they were able to
do because the tasks involved ancillary things they were incapable of, for
example they relied on background knowledge that wasn't there or unrelated
motor skills that hadn't yet developed. I'd be interested in seeing what
Piaget's methodology was compared to the current state of the art in terms of
measuring inventive ideas.

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icky
Probably around age 4, although at the time, most of them had to do with
aliens, robots, and dinosaurs.

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pfedor
I realize it's not the main point of this question, but I don't get the Set
Godin's idea. If more people were telecommuting, then the in-person
interaction would become more scarce, therefore more demanded, so the
expectations for the quality would be lower I would think?

~~~
eru
You would expect that your counter-party puts in more effort, I would say.

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cousin_it
Every interesting idea I get, later turns out to be a rehash. Especially the
ones I fall in love with. It's some kind of deficiency, wonder if it can be
cured.

~~~
eru
... or used!

------
initself
Junior in high school as I read Aristotle's Ethics.

