

Finding Ideas For Your Next Project - br0ke
http://nathanbarry.com/finding-ideas-project/

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amix
I think a better approach is to solve your own problems. This way you don't
have to waste time cold calling people and hoping they are sincere with you
with their feedback. You are the user and the creator... It's a very powerful
position to be in.

I would recommend reading Paul Graham excellent post on "startup ideas" (which
could easily translate to "project ideas"):

"The way to get startup ideas is not to try to think of startup ideas. It's to
look for problems, preferably problems you have yourself."
<http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html>

~~~
yitchelle
Solving your problem is a good way to find ideas. You know the problem well
and the context the problem is in. However, if your work life, social life or
life in general is not too varied, finding a problem to solve can be a problem
in itself. Not being respectful and some people live quite contented lives
like these, but living a simple, straight forward, suburban life style can be
hard to find pain problems.

So to increase the ways of gaining problem to solve, getting out there to
experience different aspects of life and talking to other folks are two sure
way of find problems to solve. The side effect is that you will be a more
rounded character and will, most probably, enjoy life much more.

Basically, this is what Nathan is saying.

~~~
amix
The problem is that people could be insincere, non-rational or ignorant. I
doubt they will know what their problems are, what they are willing to pay or
what the solution could be. There's a great quote by Henry Ford: "If I had
asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

For Nathan his pain point could be something related to writing and publishing
books. I think this would be a much better problem domain since he is a user
and I am sure he has some problems regarding this process that could be
improved.

~~~
yitchelle
Great quote! It stresses the point that a great solution to a problem could
comes from a different domain.

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lukethomas
"I’m doing some research into software used by ________. Just curious, is
there any software you’ve been looking for?..."

I think you would be surprised at how many people get confused by "software."
I've received answers like "Safari" to this same exact question.

Just a thought, but instead of focusing on providing another piece of software
(and phrasing it that way), look to provide business value. I know that's your
end result, but I would present it that way from the first interaction.

Also, when you've picked the market/client base you want, I highly recommend
seeing if you can visit the business for a day or two (if you can find time.)
There's nothing better than immersing yourself...it will lead to better
insight.

~~~
ErrantX
Reading through, Nathan wasn't expecting any realistic answers to this
question. It was just an ice breaker to establish contact for the follow up
call.

As to your last paragraph; this is solid advice. I've picked up a few software
ideas by viewing businesses "in action" and observing the pain points.

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sharkweek
I stole Drew Houston's idea for ideas by carrying a little notebook around to
write down things that annoy me; has lead to the beginning of several little
projects.

~~~
alok-g
How do you handle cases when annoyed by lousy implementations of features of
existing products? In other words, if the idea resulting from the frustration
looks like "feature, not a product". Doing it right now involves not just
doing that particular aspect right but also the remaining 95% of the product.

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nicholassmith
I'd say asking them as well, "What do you think you'd pay for it?" could be
useful to establish if it's genuinely worth going after it, but it's a really
awkward question to fit in and it's a _really_ awkward question to answer as
well.

~~~
nathanbarry
I like to judge the awkwardness of their response. It helps you learn how
serious they are. If they really struggle to find a price they probably don't
think their problem is that painful.

You can also focus on how much a problem costs them in wasted time or lost
revenue.

~~~
nicholassmith
That's a pretty awesome kicker to the question, I'd never thought of it in
quite those terms.

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rsobers
Another option: do what someone else is already doing. For instance, bug
tracking and project management apps have proven demand. Sometimes you can
steal enough market share by doing things better or by making subtle
variations.

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gfodor
There is more than one way to skin a cat. Customer development based
approaches like this are effective at birthing certain types of products. But
lets not fall into the trap that there is a one-size-fits-all approach to
innovation. Necessity is always the mother of invention, but often people
can't conceive of what their life is missing or what parts of life could be
more enjoyable or less painful.

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eranation
HN traffic took it down? all I get is "Error establishing a database
connection"

~~~
nathanbarry
Sorry, should be back now.

~~~
ekurutepe
It seems like it went down again. I'm getting the DB error as well.

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ThomPete
Ideas, execution, problems, audience....

They are all part of the same thing.

You can choose to be the gold digger or the merchant. It doesn't matter. One
is filled with risk but great fortune. The other is more secure but the
prospects of making it big are much less.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Yeah. I always think it is funny when people are talking about ideas as if
they are really worth much. I have new business ideas regularly. Ideas are
cheap. Execution and access to markets, is where the idea hits the road.

And the likelihood that the idea and execution will make you insanely rich is
so small that I have removed it from my equations these days. Just keep
executing though.

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wacheena
I dig this overall process (and transparency), but I'm bummed that ultimately
it came down to "I have an idea." It's an idea that has some customer
validation, but the value of this series of blog posts for folks was to prove
a process for creating a web application that didn't start with "an idea."

~~~
nathanbarry
I didn't start with the idea. It came out of a conversation with a friend last
week.

My goal for the post series is to create a web app and be transparent about
the process. So finding an idea and validating it matches that goal perfectly.

~~~
muellerwolfram
true, but the idea coming out of the idea finding process that you describe in
your post would have been slightly more awesome.

...but only slightly, and i'm still eager to read follow-ups on this
experiment!

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ebertx
There are a couple of sites that help for finding or at least verifying viable
markets:

1) U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (www.bls.gov) 2) and FreeLunch.com -
<http://www.economy.com/freelunch/default.asp>

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wasd
I really like articles like this (on how to "find" ideas) and have seen a few
on HN. Does anyone have more articles like this book marked? I've seen PG's
essay.

~~~
amitklein
Here are a few: \- <http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html> \-
<http://cdixon.org/2010/03/14/developing-new-startup-ideas/> \-
<http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/08/st_qareis/>

These are tangentially related: \-
[http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/02/entrepreneurial-
turbulence.h...](http://blog.eladgil.com/2012/02/entrepreneurial-
turbulence.html) \- <http://500hats.com/niche-to-win>

I have more general "starting a startup" links here:
<http://bitly.com/bundles/o_7ki5mkvgf8/1>

