
Ask HN: How do you get startup ideas? - porker
When I was in my early 20&#x27;s I used to have lots of interesting ideas. I was lazy and as no one else was doing them I did nothing, as I figured there was no demand. 8 of them are now being done by large companies and appear successful.<p>Now I&#x27;m in my early 30&#x27;s I&#x27;m less creative and have fewer ideas, and when I do 1+ companies are already doing it (usually 10+) and blogging about their success, or the market appears too small to be viable.<p>Where do you get your inspiration, and have you any suggestions?
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jipy9
This might help. This is in no way comprehensive, but rather just to help you
get unblocked, and that, age has less to do with creative ideas, than you are
making it.

1\. Industries that disrespect their customers. Say, you had a bad
service/sales rep experience. Then you tried to switch, but found out that
every other large competitor to this one is as bad. Probably the reason why
there are so many banking/financial services upstarts in the last couple of
years.

Caveat - usually these businesses are good at building high switching costs
into their products. How many times have you thought of ditching your bank,
but have never got around to it?

2\. Fat and thin margins. If everyone is enjoying a fat margin, they are most
likely colluding in their industry, and have some kind of (in)formal
association barring anyone else to entry with lower price. Can you legally go
against that trade association. Technology helps in leap frogging in these
situations. Thin margin businesses (usually) indicate that all the efficiency
that there is to be extracted has been. This can still be disrupted, if your
tech can find new ways of doing things.

Finally, take a look at this -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade)

Fedric Tudor started the whole ice industry by cutting pieces of lake in the
north and shipping them to south. People weren't even used to having ice in
their drinks. He created a whole new market and industry.

This might have been said a million times, most ideas look bad on the surface.
What makes them good is the execution. :)

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shrikrishna
Just keep your eyes and ears open. The set of all possible startup ideas is an
infinite one, so no matter what your age/position/domain is, you can, at any
point in your life find one or more ideas that can be turned into a startup.
How to find them? => Just be a keen observer for a couple of days. Look at the
people around you and assess the stuff that you go through on a daily basis
and ask yourself whether you can fix something that's broken or do something
to make it easier. The next question is, how better will your target
customers' lives be when you solve that problem. If the answer is "a lot",
then eureka! you have it. It's perfectly okay if the initial user base that
you have considered is very small. But your solution has to make them love you
very much

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ASquare
Im always looking for what bugs me about doing xyz. Scratching your own itch
is always a great place to start. So maybe keep a swipe file somewhere of
notes on things that you think don't make sense/could be better.

Once you have a few ideas, then go about validating whether there really is a
market for your ideas (ie Problem/Solution fit) and then take it from there.

Perhaps reading up on the lean startup methodology will help you in terms of
practically progressing from idea to validation to mvp and beyond.

Also, if whatever that thing is, is something you're passionate about - the
likelihood of your sticking with it over the long term is far greater than
just doing it because it seems like a great idea/for the money.

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Pyrodogg
You don't know if the market is too small until you get out there and do some
testing. Speculation isn't going to go far.

If you have an idea and discover that someone else did to, great! It's been
partially validated. Which particular edge of it are you going to take? What
differentiates it from their execution?

The subset of good ideas that have no current executors is way smaller than
the subset of good ideas that can be successfully executed.

Don't give up only because someone else is already executing; do it better
than them.

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beat
I assume you've had jobs since then. What did you learn about the industry
you're in? Where do you see problems that could be solved with software? And
did you meet anyone on the business side of that industry that you think might
want to be in a startup instead?

I didn't start from "I want to have a startup" and go looking for an idea. I
started with an idea based on industry experience, and realized a startup is
the way to get it done.

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stasy
I get startup ideas just from noticing things that are missing. For example if
someone says "Man I wish there was a way to do that", I find opportunity in it
and see if I can make a product for it.

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crixlet
I took an entrepreneurship course a while back that would have us do daily
"opportunity reports". These reports were a list of 50 business ideas. They
could -- and most were -- awful and not feasible ideas, but the point is to
produce 50 ideas every day. After the course of a few months, I noticed it
started changing the way I see the world. Everything that I came across
(blogs, standing in line at the grocery store, etc) I would be looking for
opportunities.

I think that's a good place to start.

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adigar
As always, PG has a great post on this:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html)

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OfferSavvy
Read Incessantly, business and tech blogs. The subconscious is this amazing
place where startup idea incubation occurs. For me, as I read about all of the
new things that exist, and all of the cool new technologies that are
surfacing, my mind starts to make connections. I am then able to consider how
such technologies could be expressed differently to solve other existing
problems.

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shervinshaikh
Inefficiencies in life.

Anytime I notice something takes vastly longer than it should, then I know
there must be a solution to fix that problem.

