

Stop thinking up startup ideas [presentation] - olejolej
http://growthbay.com/post/44698344628/stop-thinking-up-startup-ideas-presentation

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mattgreenrocks
These presentations irk me significantly.

I get that you need to work on existing problems that have users that will
pay. I get that you need a business model. I get that it needs to be a market
that is open enough.

But they rarely address how to generate ideas to work through. Perhaps I'm not
entrepreneurial enough...but I refuse to believe that's the case. I get that
you have to talk/observe users, but I don't know what market I'd like to
engage and what I'd find interesting.

In short, I know programming well, but it doesn't mean a damn thing for
creating my own products because I don't know what needs people have.

~~~
UnoriginalGuy
I'm in exactly the same situation as you. I have asked about it here before
and the replies are "do A/B testing to figure out which idea is best" which is
fine but only if you already have ideas.

There is really two problems: Creating ideas, and knowing which ideas are
"stupid" and which you should try.

While it is easy to say "A/B test them all" that just isn't realistic with any
level of time, cost, or personal constraints.

I'm yet to have any idea that passes the "would I pay money for that?" test.
That's kind of a massive problem.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
> I'm yet to have any idea that passes the "would I pay money for that?" test.
> That's kind of a massive problem.

This is a mindset problem for many developers. It's hard to realize most
businesses _love_ to pay money to make problems go away, however. When I was a
consultant, I would have thrown money at a service which I could bill through,
and it would auto-file my taxes with Uncle Sam without me having to do
anything. Why? Because I forgot to do it, and had to pay penalties and such as
one giant check when I filed for 2012.

Basically, what do people have to do that they dislike? Businesses have a
bunch of those needs.

But, yes, the startup biz seems dominated by these pithy replies from people
who've had success and just _can't imagine_ how other people also aren't
killing it. Posturing, pure and simple.

~~~
wilfra
It's not just posturing, their success came easy to them and thus they truly
believe success is easy. They don't recognize the huge role luck plays. There
is also the fact that the problem you guys are describing is not a problem at
all to many people, like the guys who say this is easy.

I am one of those for whom ideas are not a problem at all. Nor is assessing
other peoples ideas to quickly figure out which would likely have a market and
which would not.

I've just added writing a blog post about this to my to-do list, hopefully I
can come up with something good and help a whole lot of you improve upon this
if it hits the front page. It's going to be really difficult though to put
into words exactly how and why I can easily do this. I've never really thought
about that - I just do it. It comes naturally.

I'm going to put a lot more thought to this, but one thing that comes quickly
to mind:

Engineers are trained to think of all of the possible things which might go
wrong and prevent those from happening. That's the exact opposite mindset of a
productive idea bot. The idea bot thinks of all of the possible things that
might go right and only thinks about what might go wrong later (often times
pointing those things out to the idea bot is a major role of a good engineer).
With experience and practice they'll be able to dismiss ideas faster because
they know what can go wrong but they still have an optimistic approach and a
very open mind to new ideas. Engineers can have a pessimistic approach and a
somewhat closed mind about new ideas.

So what you need to do is learn to flip that switch in your brain. Once you
start actually building something, think about what can go wrong. But when
you're thinking of ideas, dismiss every negative thought that enters your mind
and think positive. What could go right, how much could I make from this if
all goes perfectly etc. Get yourself excited. Excitement about ideas breeds
more ideas.

------
marban
Asking someone in advance whether they would pay for a hypothetical solution
is a very erratic method to evaluate an idea.

~~~
bfwi
This is after they are exposed to the MVP. At this point the solution isn't
hypothetical, only the premium version is.

------
jpwagner
This presentation suggests noticing problems that have inelegant solutions
over "thinking up startup ideas", synonymous with [thinking of ideas for
companies that have nothing to do with solving problems or providing value].

Either this presentation was given to an audience of posers and kids or the
presenter thought the audience was a bunch of posers and kids. Both scenarios
sound awful.

~~~
olejolej
So on Startup Weekends are only kids? Because I don't see there nice pain-
killers but nice tech-solutions...

------
julianpye
If everyone listens to the same problems that people have and listens to
similar customer views and uses the same MVP techniques, all startups become
the same. Well, we're there - millions of graduates from business schools are
coming up with the very same MVPs. In fact we're getting drowned by all these
vertical startups. They are single-purpose tools that want to be the
toothpick, the tweezer, the tiny saw of the Swiss Army knife.

I actually think we'll be heading for consolidation and eventually people will
want broader tools that are more like universal knives that can be used in
many different ways.

Uniqueness stands out and I think the next eye-opening startups we're going to
see will have to break out of the limited MVP to scale mindset. MVPs are great
tools, especially to determine the right technology and to gain early customer
insight, but true product visions have to go far beyond them.

~~~
olejolej
As author of this presentation, I see in europe that ie. tech-people who build
startups don't see obvious problems as there is still a lot of space for
competition. They start from tech-interesting solutions. This presentation is
not about far future, but build for actual needs.

------
piotr_b
C-P-S looks like another approach to Lean Canvas. Good point - solve problems,
don't create new.

~~~
olejolej
Rhakns. Some people doesn't even understand Lean Canvas, so C-P-S formula is
lower threshold for entry into modeling startups :) simpliest model as
possible, It was my purpose in this presentation.

------
khitchdee
There's no formula for starting up and there's no one way to do it. For
example, if you have a truly game changing idea, you don't need to go the MVP
route. Over time, it will become visible. What's more important in this case
is that you stick with it until it gets widely used. This approach won't work
for a more bottom-up idea that is based on some observation about the existing
market. Then you're better of with an MVP with successive refinement.

~~~
olejolej
It is not formula for all startups but when I see ideas on Startup Weekend it
seems to me that I live in parallel world, when I read their ideas for
solutions. They often goes from solution, let's try from problem/need.

------
wilfra
"If your pitch doesn't end with 'and the cops can't do shit' then your startup
idea sucks"

~~~
eksith
Considering where privacy (or lack thereof) is headed, that may not be such a
bad idea. I'm thinking some ways of encrypted mobile-to-mobile communication,
file storage, maybe even encrypted video.

I can picture some startup somewhere coming up with a mobile P2P
network/overlay that leverages an ad-hoc wifi mesh of some sort (avoiding
carrier data limits) that lets users share everything and anything with just a
psudonym. Or maybe even just a randomly generated key as a URI (I.E. Tor).

I've yet to see a simple implementation that I can install painlessly that
lets me send text, let alone more complex stuff. Any startup that can deliver
all that in this surveillance-happy atmosphere will make a killing.

~~~
yareally
_> I'm thinking some ways of encrypted mobile-to-mobile communication, file
storage, maybe even encrypted video._

There's a few good open source implementations out there already for phone
calls and SMS. The two below were done by Moxie Marlinspike. They're built for
Android, but I'm sure they can be ported elsewhere with the source being
available.

<https://github.com/WhisperSystems/RedPhone>

<https://github.com/WhisperSystems/TextSecure>

