

How to find start-up ideas - InfinityX0
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/business-ideas/

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revorad
As soon as I started working on my startup, I started noticing lots of other
problems in the world, which I wish someone would fix. At least some of these
could turn into good business ideas too.

So, if you are romanticising about starting a startup but don't have an idea,
do this: forget about ideas and doing something new. Just pick up an existing
business and try to clone it. Along the way, you will find your idea.

Building stuff is the best generator of ideas in my experience.

~~~
calzonedome
I agree. This is why outsourcing manufacturing to other parts of the world is
a bad idea. Innovation occurs where the manufacturing takes place. Take
batteries for example. Companies in the US thought the process was simple and
there was nothing to gain from keeping the manufacturing in the US. Well, they
outsourced it to other countries in order to cut costs and look what happened.
Lithium Ion batteries came about.

On the same note, I have found that starting sentences out loud before I
finish the complete sentence in my head yields much more content, wit, and
many times even better points. (seriously, but I'm mainly forced to try this
while talking to girls at the bar)

I have heard some musicians (mainly rappers) don't write down lyrics because
the process of writing completely destroys the flow. Instead, they record
themselves improvising, quickly realizing a better phrase should have been
used, stopping, and improvising again. If they can't come up with a word or
phrase to fit into the sentence, they make a sound that fits the flow and come
back to it later.

In short, be involved with current material as closely as possible in order to
create new material. I hope this makes sense

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p4bl0
I don't really understand this need for "finding startup ideas". In my mind,
it's good idea that lead to start-up and I can't see myself thinking "I want
to launch my start-up but I don't have any idea of what to do".

Is there actually some people thinking this way (want startup -> need idea) ?

~~~
pcarmichael
Definitely. I would classify myself as someone who desires the challenge,
autonomy, and opportunity for growth of a startup, but I have a difficult time
identifying viable ideas. I feel like I'm a creative problem _solver_ , but
not a creative problem _identifier_.

I am an engineer at heart - I love to build all kinds of things, from software
to electronics, etc. If you give me an idea, I can run with it and prototype
it without difficulty.

However, if you ask me to generate viable ideas from scratch it is as if I
have writer's block. I've been working to improve by ingesting anything I can
get my hands on - be it this post, talks (such as Tom Kelley's 'How to be an
innovator for life' re: thinking like a traveler), books (such as 'Innovation
and Entrepreneurship' and 'The Long Tail'), reading HN and PG's essays, and so
forth.

I don't think finding viable ideas will ever be as intuitive to me as it is to
some, but perhaps with practice and hard work I will start to recognize some
opportunities.

~~~
messel
Howdy Philip, maybe I can be of help.

I find that ideas that really grab me can hit just about any time of day or
night, but only if I'm open to them. When I'm idea light, it's because I
discard ideas as low value without giving them a proper shake or playing with
them (hashing out a design).

My poor cofounder get's rained on by my ideas when they're flowing, At this
point I'm pretty confident he auto forwards them to his junk box :D.

Talking with folks about their needs can help trigger your creative side as
well. Helping other folks can inspire us to experiment in ways helping
ourselves can't.

~~~
prawn
If you ever want to sound-off ideas against someone, get in touch. I wonder if
people start auto-deleting mine too because I will think of something new most
days of the week.

~~~
messel
It's helpful to sound off ideas, because there's no guarantee we'll recognize
our best. I wait till I really fall in love with an idea, as that will help
drive me to implement it (I'm a pretty slow hacker).

Sure hit me up with ideas anytime at messel at gmail dot com. I'm Mark

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icey
Would people who can't find startup ideas be interested in paying for a
service that provides a stream of ideas along with basic market research?

I don't know what the exact mechanism would be (subscription of some sort most
likely, with an additional "Pay to remove this idea from all the listings"
fee).

~~~
pavs
No. I think ideas are a dime a dozen. I used to have a huge list of ideas,
they are worth nothing because they never saw the day of light.

~~~
prawn
I'm always surprised by people who can't think of an idea to work on. My
problem is I start on one and then get distracted by the next one too soon.
I've got a jar of post-its with ideas of varying strength.

~~~
megablast
Maybe these people don't count the silly ideas they get, which they have no
way to solve, or would not actually produce money, or are impossible.

~~~
prawn
Fair point, but I suspect the "Need an idea"-types (to generalise) are looking
for anything that might have a faint hope of success. If you have the
judgement/sense to discount ideas for the reasons you listed, I doubt you're
on HN begging for ideas.

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mg1313
An idea I had 5 years ago was related to local (social networking, news,
events,classifieds) - at that time local wasn’t the hot topic it is today (and
Facebook was just for colleges).

How did I came up with that? I had a need - I was a fresh immigrant to US
(coming from Eastern Europe) - didn’t know almost anybody - and I though would
be nice to have a local site for each neighborhood (based of the zip code
level) where people can interact, post local news, local events, local
classifieds.

I even start coding and did a prototype in the free time I had, and I almost 1
year (which is still online at <http://www.mirceagoia.com/local> ) hoping that
I may present that to an investor - well, I was too new here and I had to look
for a job eventually, to survive. So, i abandoned the idea - but, who knows,
that idea could be still viable, especially nowadays.

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gchakrab
WebApps.StackExchange.com is a great place to find market needs and ideas.

So many needs I didn't even realize were problems

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mg1313
I find startup ideas by looking at the domain names which are expiring and are
in the pendingDelete status. I acquired lots of these and for some I am
writing down what can be done for it. When you start a startup it’s good to
have a good domain name right away - just ask Mint.com how much they had to
give up for that good domain name (gave up some good equity) - or ask
Facebook, which paid $200,000 for it after it became successful (money which
could be used for the actual business)

~~~
llaxsll
facebook had thefacebook.com initially and I don't think it was very
expensive. I actually found thefacebook.com to be equally satisfying for me.

------
est
<http://www.reddit.com/r/SomebodyMakeThis/>

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Benjo
I like the framing of any annoyance as a potential startup idea. It implies
that one either has the basis for an idea or are generally content anyway. In
which case, why would one need a startup?

May work better in theory than in practice.

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cypherpunks01
I've always just looked on highdeas for these?

~~~
fragmede
(linky) <http://highdeas.com/>

Also Halfbakery - <http://www.halfbakery.com/>

~~~
toumhi
Also <http://www.oneeyedeer.com/issues> This lets people post about their
issues, see if you can solve them :-)

