
Actionable Ways To Get Startup Ideas - 147
http://christopherdbui.com/post/2013/10/25/Actionable-Ways-To-Get-Startup-Ideas.html
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digitailor
I've never met a successful entrepreneur who sits around trying to come up
with business ideas. At the risk of sounding negative and grumpy, groan.
Another one of these blogadoodoos. What follows is my $.02, some might
disagree.

From what I've seen it goes "I have experience in this area" -> "Wow there are
under-served market needs here" -> "I have some relevant experience to start a
company that addresses it and can attract talent" -> startup.

Not "I'm a wannabe entrepreneur" -> "I have no domain specific expert
knowledge" -> "let's randomly find something we guess people care about and
overspecialize" -> start coding blindly or find a Rails dev on Odesk. Seen
that one fail innumerable times.

One other thing. If you have to go searching for ideas, you probably have no
business experience. Let's say you manage to find a good idea using something
like the techniques of this blog post. You manage to secure some funding. The
startup starts to do well. You then become a sitting duck to be ejected by
your investors, as you've built the product, but are inexperienced in
business, and they specifically will want you out for that reason.

An exception to this is incubators like Y Combinator, who are more concerned
with team chemistry than idea. If they weren't buying the concept but want to
give you a shot, they might stick your team on an idea other than yours. But
they probably already have an appropriate idea in mind, they don't have to go
hunting.

Another possible exception is Stanford MBAs, specifically.

So much advice on blogs. Be careful.

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enraged_camel
>>Not "I'm a wannabe entrepreneur" -> "I have no domain specific expert
knowledge" -> "let's randomly find something we guess people care about and
overspecialize" -> start coding blindly or find a Rails dev on Odesk. Seen
that one fail innumerable times.

What kind of domain specific expertise did Mark Zuckerberg have when he wrote
Facemash (Facebook's predecessor)?

The answer is "none." It was a pure hobby project - he didn't even plan on
monetizing it. Yet here we are.

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tagawa
I don't really agree with your domain knowledge point - he was a college kid
and it was aimed at college kids.

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levlandau
The only upside to "looking for startup ideas" is that it is better than
sitting and doing nothing or watching 13 episodes of house of card on netflix
for example. The key is to not commit to an idea that was generated in this
essentially random manner. Treat such ideas as "projects" where your main
objective is to learn. Perhaps do a few in parallel. Experience naturally
follows and then real ideas can spring forth. The mistake is to "come up" with
an idea and then blast full steam ahead when there is no basis for real
conviction.

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trevoro
You don't ever seem to find startup ideas. Startup ideas seem to find you.
That's why it's important to always be listening - if you listen often enough
then problems will "appear out of nowhere" and you'll be in a good place to
understand their potential.

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johncole
I thought the author made a good point though, actually said what you're
saying. This is just if you are in a pinch or need to pivot. I thought it was
a good article, wish he had written a little more,

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TelmoMenezes
What's the difference between "Actionable Ways" and plain "Ways"?

~~~
JackFr
ac·tion·a·ble ˈakSHənəbəl/ adjective

    
    
        1. giving sufficient reason to take legal action.
        
        2. able to be done or acted on; having practical value.
        

Up until about 10 years ago, it was nearly exclusively used in the first
sense. The second sense was popularized by pop-business gurus promoting with
proactive dynamic enterprise synergistic actionable best-practices...

~~~
tsotha
Yep. I still laugh at the 2nd usage. When I went to school this headline would
have meant "Ways to get sued getting startup ideas".

