
How do you come up with your ideas for startups? - arasakik

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pg
Notice things that seem broken-- things that should be possible, but aren't
(yet).

~~~
brett
A good place to start this is things you're personally dissatisfied with.
Develop a healthy sense of annoyance with the things you use. Start to look
for things thought you ought to find really annoying but don't because you've
gotten used to them.

I've found it surprising how much this can be honed like any other skill. At
first thinking up ideas seems difficult, then suddenly you've got a queue of
things you want to build because you're annoyed. Then you go through the queue
for things that other people are likely to be dissatisfied with as well.

Hopefully once you're at that point you're better equipped to spot broken
stuff that you don't necessarily use (or even want to use). My guess is that
not being put up their own online store was not a pain point for Paul and
Robert but years of building whatever tools like lacked helped them spot it as
a problem others were having.

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bootload
Idea praxis:

There are many ways ...

\- make things for yourself & solve your own problems

\- take notes in notebook

\- observe from nature

\- don't be obstinate (in-flexible)

\- revise your ideas & filter

\- listen to your users

The thing is some ideas are crap. Others maybe ok. But it's what you do with
the idea that matters. Turn the idea to a demo. Release the demo and see how
many users pick it up. Re-visit your old ideas

It's how quickly you can turn idea to demo. Unleash your ideas in the form of
a demo on your users. You'll find out quickly if they are crap or not.

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imperator
I have lots of ideas. Then I choose the ones that keep coming up as trends, or
correlate with things my friends say.

I would say about ninety nine percent of my ideas are really bad or crazy
sounding. When I look back at my notebooks, most of my ideas are juvenile,
ill-concieved, and smack of mental illness. But there are always a few golden
ideas glinting amongst them.

I warn people against concentrating on good ideas because that prevents them
from practicing the raw creation of ideas. Good ideas will be revealed as your
collection of raw ideas interacts with the world.

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MEHOM
Has anyone ever heard of the "strategy by guidelines" and the "Tangible
Vision" approach? Start by understanding what one wants in terms of the
outcome and then develop a set of guidelines based on achieving the outcomes.
Uses a mindmap software to draw out the scheme. Slowly start making
connections between the outcome and the approach of completing the outcome
(milestone by milestone). Without any project mgmt strategy, most developers
are just guessing on their objectives and the approach.

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danw
Whenever you run into a frustration in the world write it down. Then later
when your trawling for ideas come back to that list and find a solution that
will make the frustration go away.

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waleedka
Check this excellent book by Kevin O'Connor, the founder of DoubleClick. He
explains his own process for finding ideas and the mistakes that a lot of
people do when choosing their own ideas. It's an eye opener.

The Map of Innovation: Creating Something Out of Nothing.
<http://www.amazon.com/Map-Innovation-Creating-Something-
Nothing/dp/1400048311>

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arasakik
I've found that the most effective way to come up with ideas is to spend some
time alone writing down ideas, usually "aha!" moments that occur while I am
doing something completely unrelated. Usually the idea scratches a personal
itch I have. After that, I've found that bouncing the idea off of co-founders
helps to assert (or reject) that it is a valid business opportunity. How about
you guys? What methodology works best for you?

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natrius
I pretend to be a VC, listen to people's pitches, and implement the best ones.

(It's a joke. Laugh.)

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Alex3917
I still think the best source of inspiration is the government's list of 101
things to do besides having sex:

<http://www.iamworththewait.org/101.html>

It does a pretty good job at spanning the range of human activity.

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Wintermute
You've probably already done this, but if not definitely take a look at the PG
essay. Pretty solid stuff there. <http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html>

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PaulH
1) Scratch your own itch 2) Think of a way to replace existing products or
services with web technology.

Good luck!

