
Look for opportunities rather than ideas - pron
http://swombat.com/2012/2/16/opportunities-not-ideas
======
DanielBMarkham
Great article swombat.

Here's another exercise for differentiating opportunities from ideas: turn the
tv on to a random channel, preferably a channel that covers some area you
normally aren't interested in.

Pay close attention to the commercials. These are probably for products
(ideas) that you find no value in at all. Yet somebody just like yourself is
making these commercials and making a boatload of money doing it. Why? What
opportunities did they see in ideas that you would find worthless? Can you see
how the idea may be completely useless in your eyes, yet the opportunity very
valuable?

The title was such that I was able to upvote this article before I even read
it! (Yes, I did actually RTA) I knew exactly where you were going. An
opportunity is an idea + value. It's the addition of the value that makes it
so different than just run of the mill ideas. An idea might be to write a text
indexing system built on references like research papers are ranked. An
opportunity is making a simple-to-use web search engine so folks can more
easily find what they are looking for. Big difference.

The more I think about it, the more I feel we should eliminate the word "idea"
completely from discussions about startups. All the talk should only be about
opportunities.

~~~
pestaa
I wholeheartadly agree with everything you said, and I'd love to understand it
even more.

What is the difference between an idea and business value? How do you spot
both of them at the same time, as neither can exist without the other? How do
you increase business value when you're out of fresh ideas?

------
paraschopra
Better still, look for big enough and relatively accessible markets that are
in need for better solutions and then simply develop those solutions. Let the
markets give you an idea, rather than you come up with an idea and then try to
find a market for you. I'm a big believer in market-based approach for (most)
startups.

~~~
swombat
Yes, I believe you made that point in a post which I linked to. Ah, here it
is: [http://swombat.com/2011/1/10/make-money-from-your-web-
applic...](http://swombat.com/2011/1/10/make-money-from-your-web-application-
start-with-the-market)

I don't think the points are in contradiction. Opportunities are mostly found
via markets. Without a market, there is no opportunity, just an infertile
idea...

------
dave_sullivan
Completely agree. The "idea" preoccupation with entrepreneurs is like the
business equivalent of trendy weight loss diets.

It's easy, so people want to believe all you need is the right idea and you're
golden. The truth is much simpler, but it's also much harder to implement
because it takes discipline and persistence. Probably why failure rates are so
high in business as with diets...

If you think your idea is more than 5% of what matters, youve already lost.

------
j45
Totally agree. A great way to find opportunities is to consult and learn a
business from the inside out, you'll stumble over so many opportunities that
you can build a solution for and even sell locally at first to have those
magical lean customer conversations before hand that you'll be left in awe.

Learning to sell is one of the biggest gifts to have. Selling your ideas,
thoughts in a job, to others, is a skill that's critical, let alone doing it
in business.

By speaking with customers and saying "Hey, I'm looking for something to build
and I want to learn about your problems, mind giving me a few minutes?" is all
the selling you'll ever need to do. There is no shortage of small business
owners that won't mind.d

Remember, it's not always the problem you solve that has to be sexy. Having
your time free and paid for is sexy. Learning the ropes of business on a
smaller project that grows regularly is sexy.

Let go of your inhibitions and become a productivity pirate, use the
technology that gives you the quickest result and most productivity.

Avoid configuration integration/masturbation like the plague or you'll lose
momentum. This means, use what you know.

------
HeyLaughingBoy
_Make it a constant habit to pick out some of those things and figure out how
they make money_

This is the one that really got me and why I'm often confused by HN "startups"
and ideas. I simply can't figure out how they will ever make enough money for
the venture to be worthwhile.

It's mindblowing how many niches there are and the huge amount of businesses
that exist (take a short drive through any industrial park, write down the
business names and then google them, for example). So why do programmers
insist on coming up with something that never existed and trying to force-feed
it to people? That will work in maybe 0.00001% of all cases when the
alternative is so much more likely to be profitable.

------
tcarnell
What the startup industry needs is for the business world to feel that they
can pay a reasonable price and get a great bespoke software product built. In
just the same way they pay for insurance, legal fees, IT, staff, they also pay
for somebody to build them bespoke software for their company.

If the business world thought like this, then we (developers) would not have
to 'guess' what would be a good or valuable idea, the business world would
give it to us.

------
jayliew
I started sharing some "meta ideas" I've collected over time, to spur some
ideas on how to find opportunities: <http://times.jayliew.com/tag/meta-idea/>

------
nodata
> Learn to sell.

How?

~~~
swombat
I'll get to that in a later post. There are many ways to do so. Some quick
ideas:

\- Buy things and sell them back. E.g. buy an item on eBay and sell it. Keep
doing that over and over again until you figure out how to make a profit in
the process.

\- Sell your time (directly, not via a regular job). Almost everyone has
something they're good at. Do that again and again until you're good at it,
then see if you can sell someone else's time.

~~~
alexro
You can sell on ebay before you bought anything!

------
dsr_
Ideas are free. Implementation is hard.

(Well, good implementation is hard.)

