

Ask YC : How to find ideas for a web startup - vp

I have a day job in IT firm bulding "Enterprise Class Application" in Java/J2EE. There is a lack of innovation, creativity and challenges in my current job. I want to do something innovative, meaningful and challenging.
So, I am working to start a web startup. But, I am unable to find unique ideas. Whatever I think of, already exists in one form or other. 
How do I find an idea?
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vikram
You need to work on your it sucks radar. In my experience all software sucks
(even what I've written). The user is typically looking for a piece of
software where something works, anything.

So everything that you see can be improved. What you want to find our
improvements which change the market? Sometimes you can see this before you
start working on the problem. I can only see the possibilities when I consider
the problem deeply.

So my suggestion is to find a problem that you have, and figure out what is
the least that you have to do to solve it. (You really want this to be 1 weeks
work). Then develop the solution and figure out how it sucks, and it does, all
software sucks. Get feedback from your friends and make improvements.

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timcederman
Who cares if something exists? The important question is can you do it better?

Once you get the urge to do your own thing an important stage is to reflect
upon your ideas and their feasibility. Once you hit on the right one, you
should get a "this is it" feeling. Seeing other sites doing the 'same' thing
should just spur you on.

~~~
jon_dahl
Agreed - IMO, until 2 or more players have saturated the market, competition
isn't going to necessarily keep you out.

Two other bits of advice:

1\. Find something limited in scope, and build it under constraints. At least
to start, assuming that you're going to keep your day job. In other words: can
you build something that actually has value, and that you would use, in 40
hours? This is a good exercise for a first startup project, and can keep you
from running down a rabbit hole.

2\. Decide if this is a side project or a full-time job. If it is a side
project, you can build something you like and help it grow slowly, without
worrying about your take-home pay right away. If you're going to quit your day
job, the stakes are much higher - you can't rely on slow growth (because your
rent/mortgage depends on profit), and you should never rely on explosive viral
growth (because it probably won't happen to you, no matter how good you are).

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gscott
If you are looking for something absolutely no one is doing then you are going
to end up having to open up the whole market on your own.

I would suggest making something that exists, better. Something that people
will want and will use because they are already trained to use it.

Go one step further and make sure that it runs on people's system tray as well
as on the web, and on a mac, and linux.

~~~
xenoterracide
or in our case, we are applying and combining existing proven technologies
into existing markets that haven't used this tech yet. Stay tuned for updates
on how well we do, but if we fail it's not likely due to that.

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tomh
Some people actually blog about ideas they'd like to see:
<http://blog.stevepoland.com/>

One way might be to combine a platform (PC/Mobile/Voice) with a communication
medium (RSS/Twitter/Video) and think about ways people could use a new
combination. For example, Voice + RSS = people 'reading' the web from
listening to a phone.

Another way might be if you are using a service already but there is a serious
'feature gap' that you could address, i.e. how to find out what Twitter users
are linking to? Sure you would have to de-code tinyurl addresses, what else
would you have to do to accurately report that figure? (Idea was suggested by
Merlin Mann; he is another guy who frequently posts ideas he'd like to see).

~~~
vp
Thank you all for the help.

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cesart
Agree with timcederman. Pre-Google buyout, there were and still are tons of
video hosting/sharing startups. BUT, why did YouTube ultimately take off and
get purchased by Google? They did something different/better than everyone
else.

In YouTube's case, I argue that they knew how to market themselves. Don't
discredit your positioning and target audience. Write a kickass app tailored
to what they specifically need. And hey, if it's another video app, how is
your version better or more niche than YouTube?

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ordinathorreur
Solve a problem, and don't look at how the competition tried to solve it until
you've formulated your own solution, then start looking at how your
competitors do it. Note that this doesn't mean that you should ignore your
competitors; obviously you need to investigate the market potential before you
draw up your own plan. Competitor analysis is part of that process.

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ashleyw
As people have mentioned - who cares if it exists, everything exists in some
shape and if it didn't exist, it probably doesn't have a market anyway!

If you can do it better, you can succeed. (though don't try, for example, to
create a mail app like Gmail, you will probably never keep up with them!)

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adrianwaj
Paul Graham would say: "Build something people want."

And in your case, "Build Something You Want" (provided it doesn't exist) - and
you'll have more energy to play with too.

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davidw
Partner with someone who has more ideas than you? But beware of "idea guys"
who only have ideas and no useful skills.

~~~
tstegart
Isn't having great ideas a useful skill?

~~~
davidw
As agotterer says, the problem is with people who only "have ideas". Having an
idea and communicating it takes 10 minutes. If that 10 minutes is all you
spend on the startup, while the technical guy spends months... it kind of
sucks for the technical guy.

~~~
flashgordon
touche... even though ideas are very important.. ideas by THEMSELVES are
useless... Having said that I am totally useless when it comes to "coming up"
with ideas.. i am more a builder myself... again, thats a pretty stupid
labelling...

