
How to brainstorm great business ideas - jhow15
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/how-to-brainstorm-great-business-ideas-ab51c3d51c
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tappio
There is an interesting bias going on here. I'm wondering how many people
upvoting this text has actually built a business, or just want to believe that
what was written here is true?

Building a business is messy. Most ideas suck initially. Companies who got the
problem right the first time are extremely rare. Just as rare as companies who
succeeded with a crappy idea having great execution.

The hero ingredient is luck. Using all the tricks of the non scientific
entrepreneurship self-help literature may grant you better odds at getting
lucky, or may not.

You know if the problem/idea/execution was good/real after you have customers
paying you. And even after that you don't really know was it execution or idea
that won the game, only that they were enough good to succeed.

~~~
_Understated_
> The hero ingredient is luck.

This... 100% this!

I've mentored and worked with dozens of entrepreneurs and small businesses
over the last few years and I mention this to all of them but it's not a case
of "if I wait around I'll get lucky". You still need to be active and work
hard and fix the right problem with the right solution and then, if you get
lucky, you'll succeed.

I teach entrepreneurs to pitch and tell them to go to relevant events.
Consistently. They may need to go to 200 events and pitch at them because you
have no idea what one of those 200 events will give you the break you are
looking for. And then at event 124 someone says "hey, I have that problem,
let's talk"...

Now, it's not all about pitching at events but I'm trying to get across the
story that you need to consistently do something for a while so that when luck
strikes at that particular time you are there.

The chances of getting lucky right out the door are very slim.

Also, I make sure they understand this: Love the problem, not the solution!

~~~
epiphanitus
But how would you define luck, anyway? I think it was Oprah who said something
along the lines of "luck is when preparation meets opportunity".

~~~
Paddywack
I believe we make our own "luck", and I think the above quote is elegant!

WRT finding interesting ideas...

We used to talk about "increasing your surface area of luck" by meeting more
people, getting exposed to more ideas/ opportunities etc.

If "Innovation happens at the intersection", then the more you come into
contact with, the more your chances of finding an interesting (non-obvious)
intersection between problem and solution, or two entirely different solution
domains.

WRT executin: Gary player = "The more I practice the luckier I get"

------
irjustin
Fantastic post. Lots of weight on the problem discovery area which is the
right move and engineers turned entrepreneurs skip this step a lot. I know I
did.

A book recommended by YC's Aaron Epstein is The Mom Test[0]. The first 50-60%
of the book is dedicated to how to discover problems with end clients/users
that are worth tackling.

I have used the techniques personally and it's great to see what users say is
a huge problem vs a problem they're willing to pay for.

It is easy to get stuck in a self-fulfilling trap that a user complains is a
big problem. I recently spoke with a customer:

\- "What's your biggest problem?" (book says this question is a no no)

\- He replies, "If I sell 3 cars at the same time, I'm out of available float
(cash) while I wait for those deals to close. This is a HUGE problem for me!"

\- "How do you solve this today?" I ask.

\- "I have other, larger car sales company who will lend me money at XX
rates."

Right there, it's a solved problem. The end user figured out their own way.
Turns out other smaller dealers like him rely on large trade line companies.

The only way I could complete is either on lower cost of financing or speed.
At which point, for me, it's not a problem worth solving. The problem isn't so
big for him where he's willing to throw cash at me for it.

Talk to users.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-
everyone-...](https://www.amazon.com/Mom-Test-customers-business-everyone-
ebook/dp/B01H4G2J1U)

~~~
james_impliu
This book is incredibly helpful - I just wish they'd do a follow up book
around how you interview users on your product once it exists.

I guess the same principle applies "tell me about a new feature you want for
our product... Did you actually try to find a workaround? No" *X probably
isn't a feature we should prioritize top then

I'd love to see more examples of ways to get good existing product feedback.

~~~
LaundroMat
I found out about the Kano method about a year ago and have been using it
professionally since (when appropriate).

It's a great way of discovering customer attitudes towards product features.

Forgive the plug, but I liked Kano so much that I wrote a free tool to create,
conduct and analyze Kano surveys at
[https://kanochart.com](https://kanochart.com)

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samsquire
I am a serial idea writer and I have to agree with the author.

Ideas are inherently valuable, maybe not financially, but they're valuable to
have and valuable to society to share.

It makes me angry that people actually believe ideas are inherently worthless.
Or that without any code or implementation they're worthless. It's a meme that
needs to die. It's like having your cake and eating it too. Here's a free idea
for you to think about and contribute to but it's not enough, you want the
outcome without any effort too. So you say my idea is worthless.

Ideas are the precursors of RFCs and ISOs and any thing that humanity has ever
accomplished. And ideas are meant to be shared.

People that think ideas are worthless are shutting down conversations about
good ideas because of this obsession with the idea that execution is all that
matters. And so many ideas die on the grape vine because of this poor
attitude.

~~~
fossuser
I think the ideas being worthless meme is an over-correction of the person
that thinks the idea is all of the value and wants to hire an engineer to
'just do the implementation' for little reward.

Ideas have value, and someone who can unite people with a clear vision can do
incredible things but the implementation is a big part of the actual
difficulty and usually you have to update the idea as you learn more from the
implementation.

In general I suspect the implementation is usually harder than coming up with
the idea in most cases and fewer people can do it. (Exceptions might be things
like General Relativity and initial Bitcoin paper).

Still, obvious value in trying to come up with things from first principles.

~~~
CM30
Yeah, this is the reason right here. There are thousands of people on internet
forums, social media sites and subreddits who want to start projects with
themselves as the 'idea man', assuming other people will join and do all the
actual implementation work. You see it a lot in game design/development
communities, where these people talk about how they'll make the next mega 3D
MMORPG where you can go anywhere and do anything, and assume they can just
come up with the ideas while their team does all the building work.

The idea might potentially be interesting in itself, but without the
implementation it won't be all that useful.

~~~
fossuser
Yep - people like this generally set off alarms for me because ideas are cheap
and it’s easy to sit around “thinking of things” and trick yourself into
thinking you’re making some sort of progress.

Mainly though it’s through the act of attempting implementation and
interacting with the world that you learn the most. Someone who refuses to try
to do this to get better probably just isn’t very capable and their ideas
probably aren’t very good.

Even if you do come up with an idea that is viable most of the time so have
others and it’s the successful execution that sets you apart.

I’ve met people that sit around patting themselves on the back for having the
same idea that someone else used to actually build something.

While having the insight is critical, it’s a lot smaller part (also usually
their idea was a vague generalization of whatever ended up existing).

Kind of reminds me of how the Winklevoss twins were portrayed in the social
network, no idea how true to life that is - but that sense of ownership they
had when they didn’t really do anything of value.

------
Ace__
I very much agree with this post in that analysis of the problem has to be the
first step. There needs to be both a contextual and a granular appreciation of
the problem.

You get far too many founders looking for the most intense problem when that
is just one facet of a problem. Christmas songs are a problem, painful,
intense, etc. But it's only once a year, which would mean not very active
users.

As well as the Mom Test, off-the-top of my head, check out

1\. Talking To Humans
[https://www.talkingtohumans.com/](https://www.talkingtohumans.com/)

2\. Testing With Humans
[https://testingwithhumans.com/](https://testingwithhumans.com/), both by Giff
Constable.

There are some medical pain evaluation papers that I found highly informative,
but I would need to go through my notes as I can't recollect them.

And if anybody is interested, I have a free tool you can download, that will
aid you to assess your idea by breaking it apart into its elemental
composition and looking deeper into the problem, the audience, and the market.

It's at MVP v2, so long way to go yet, and it is only for MS Access, so PC
only: [https://startizer.com/](https://startizer.com/)

~~~
quickthrower2
Smoothly done! I’m going to try your tool out. And thanks!

~~~
Ace__
Hello QuickThrower2. Thank you for your reply. As for downloading it,
brilliant, I hope it helps you. If you have any questions, comments, feedback,
etc. Please do let me know. Cheers, Ace.

------
notlukesky
It’s a nice framework for many ideas I suppose, but there too many examples of
“non-obvious” “stupid ideas” with no market or problem to solve that
eventually succeed. And plenty of successes that were not innovative but had
great execution.

Like most things in life timing is everything and we only know the right
timing and “ideas” in hindsight.

~~~
MetalGuru
Can you give some examples of said stupid ideas?

~~~
distantaidenn
Letting strangers sleep in your empty rooms?

I grew up in a high-crime city in the US which shaped my perception of the
world, thus AirBnB sounded like madness to me when I first heard of it.

------
veeralpatel979
I would also add learning to evaluate your idea(s) objectively.

When you think you've thought of a great idea, by definition, you're biased
toward it.

If you then start building it, the sunk cost makes you even more resistant to
abandoning it.

In my experience, just "building the product" can take a lot longer than you
expect. I've spent several months building out what were mostly CRUD apps.

Why? I didn't realize it at the time, but I was working part time, I had to
figure out how to do many things for the first time, I had to keep myself
motivated, and I had to do development but also design and PM work.

If I was working on something new, I probably would:

1\. think of a problem to work on

2\. talk to a lot of users following the Mom Test (keeping in mind your
product has many personas of users) to validate the problem

3\. think of a lot of ideas to solve the problem

4\. somehow identify what idea to prototype first and what the feature set
should be

5\. prototype it in Figma, show it to users, improve the prototype until
customers are asking "when can I buy this?"

I haven't done this yet. If anyone has any suggestions for getting from set of
ideas -> a prototype users want, I would love to hear them!

------
cryptoz
It's a good article I guess, but a bit over-optimistic about execution.

> You can build anything.

Not really, though. The article suggests that there are no constraints to what
can be built, but there on constraints to what people want / need, how you'll
make money, etc.

There are significant constraints around what can be built. They change over
time, and in fact, finding ideas that were rejected for being too hard in the
past can be a good indicator of something that could be built now.

And many great business ideas that solve huge problems with clear distribution
channels can fail, because the solution that works isn't possible or feasible
to build yet.

------
Thorentis
Points 2 and 3 are almost identical for every single business on Indie
Hackers.

Subscription model. Internet delivery, with email and social media marketing.

After that, you're back to the square 1 of "now I need an idea". The post had
some good points, but for the IH audience I'm not sure it would change much
about how they analyse business ideas.

~~~
quickthrower2
An Indie Hacker isn’t going to buy a pub, or start a VC fueled startup for
that matter. OTOH under the umbrella of internet delivered ideas there is a
lot of choice as what to work on! And the internet bit could be trivial with
most of the legwork going on in real life, or it could be a pure internet play
all online with a rich app.

------
cloudking
I don't agree with the author. Sometimes good ideas solve problems people
didn't know they had.

~~~
quickthrower2
I posit a problem you didn’t know you had is a problem the founder knew you
had through some wisdom of the crowd or even just luck that their own itch is
yours too.

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aSplash0fDerp
In a roundabout kind of way, if you find the solution first, its called
learning and if your mindset is aligned to this article, its defined as
research.

Though in a monkey see, monkey do world, there is no shortage of mimicked
expertise and flattery, so plan accordingly.

------
frequentnapper
egghead founder downloaded a bunch of youtube vids and zipped them up and sold
them to a mailing list? Weren't there copyright issues? I'm not sure if that
sort of advice is sound, but the rest of the article resonated nicely.

~~~
tossmeout
from what i know of the story he had the creators permission and later they
worked together as cofounders

------
say_it_as_it_is
Starting small isn't universally applicable advice. It depends on competition
and availability of substitutes. It's also an approach that will yield no more
than small gains at a time.

------
flippy_flops
This is good advice, but I think the fundamental issue for many people is that
they are looking for a formula to supplement their own brain.

In reality there are many classes of successful businesses. It’s hard to
explain the success of a restaurant franchise and of flappy bird in the same
formula except to over generalize it as, “decent idea with decent execution
and decent timing in front of a decent audience.”

I do think posts like this are very helpful at eliminating dead end habits. I
know I’m guilty of searching for a lock.

------
sonicxxg
From the article : "It's been said that ideas don't matter, execution does. I
wholeheartedly disagree. You need both to succeed, but you can only get so
good at execution. A great idea gives you much more leverage."

I think it underestimates execution. A great execution makes the dumbest ideas
succeed. Reminds me of 'potatoparcel.com'. The business is solely focused on
mailing potatoes, which sounds ridiculous, but it found its place.

------
saadalem
How do we ensure the upvotes on HN ? I posted this 3 days ago

~~~
quickthrower2
You don’t ensure upvotes. Just luck. Getting your mates to upvote is against
the rules, so best to just see what happens.

------
goatherders
The big nugget to me from my own experience is pricing. Early or inexperienced
business founders charge too little. They charge just enough to make some
money but not offend the wallet of the customer. This is all wrong - if your
solution provides a real ROI then companies will pay a lot for it. Of your
solution costs $1000 to solve a $1000000 problem then you are an idiot and
priced too low by an order of magnitude.

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chiefalchemist
Good article but execution matters. Execution is like sperm. There are plenty
of eggs (i.e., ideas), never a shortage. But unless an egg is properly
fertilized it's going no where.

Futhermore, Team A can faulter at the execution of Idea X, but later Team B
can pick up Idea X and do it right. For example, the ipod. The idea of an mp3
player wasn't new.

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aliswe
> iOS users who need to get tasks done but prefer modern, clean UIs", that's
> not an actual group of people. You're just describing the features of a
> product you're already biased toward building.

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Giorgi
I think what all these kinds of articles are forgetting is luck.

It's a lottery.

------
harrydry
great post

