
Software ideas are born: step-by-step guide on generating one for 2019 - maxchurilov
https://www.mindk.com/blog/how-software-ideas-are-born/
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ackfoo
A pile of crap written by a marketing goon. Here’s my list:

1\. Get rid of the marketing goons. All they will tell you is how to follow
the crowd. Making your own path will be harder and slower to success, but
eventually more valuable and rewarding.

2\. Get out there and live. Dive into an area of expertise. Only once you have
achieved genuine proficiency and a depth of specialized knowledge will you
understand that part of the universe well enough to think of a truly great
innovation.

3\. Forget money. Make something that is great and useful to you. Eventually,
the money will come. If it doesn’t, it means you weren’t lucky enough, and
that’s life. You still made something great, and that’s better than wasting
your life chasing money and fame by doing something stupid.

4\. Start with the small problems and work your way up. Theranos failed
because they tackled a huge problem (low volume blood analysis) before solving
all the small problems along the way.

5\. Try to do something useful. If you prioritize making money over making
something worthwhile, you are just going to accelerate our destruction.
Remember, a study recently showed 98% of bugs in a rain forest had gone. If
that doesn’t sound like the end of days to you, you need to wake up. A dying
planet doesn’t need another way to trade fucking derivatives. If you’re going
to destroy the planet to do it, it better be worth it.

6\. Remember the big ideas. Curing disease, reversing aging, understanding
protein folding, and figuring out what the unknown 95% of the universe is made
of. If you spend you life on these problems, it won’t be wasted, even if you
are not particularly successful. And you don’t have to chase a big idea to
notice clues along the way, or to make the tools that others can use to get
further along a meaningful path.

~~~
y4mi
I agree wholeheartedly on the beginning, but I feel the need to address you
last points.

> [..] A dying planet [..]

the planet isn't dying. Its gonna be fine after our extinction in a few years.

> 5.

keep in mind that a lot of people don't have enough financial stability to
actually do follow their dreams, or don't have any dreams to begin with.

> 6.

Not everyone can nor should work on these topics. Its great if people feel
empowered enough to actually look at these challenges, but most of us wouldn't
be a good fit for such an environment.

~~~
asdf333
When people say dying planet I think most are referring to "made uninhabitable
by humans"

~~~
infinite8s
It's more like "made uninhabitable for humans/current life". I'm sure after a
few hundred million years some new forms of biodiversity would arise to
replace what can't survive whatever disaster we leave behind (short of
sundering the earth into multiple pieces and pushing us out of our current
orbit). One model of genotypic diversity is that it is a mostly random walk
through a huge multidimensional space, and while it's unlikely to revisit the
same point twice, nature has only explored a small fraction of the total
space.

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talkingtab
We would all like a formula, but good, innovative products are firstly a
response to some personal problem or need. Someone gets an itch - from bad
taxi service, or high hotel prices or wanting to know what their college
friends are up to - and they scratch it. Note the crucial step: not accepting
things as they are.

The second step is to think outside the box. There are problems that cannot be
solved, problems that can be solved in conventional ways and there are the
ones in between. It is the ones in between that are ripe for innovation. We
all have conceptual buckets, things like "AI" or "on demand software" but
conceptual buckets are deadly to innovation. They become the reasons things
can't be done or should be done in some conventional way. Certainly, being
aware of AI is good, being aware of blockchains is good. Thinking they are the
"answer" is not good. Remember the Zune!

Follow the path. Innovations have a logic and truth of their own. Airbnb
started with the idea of air mattresses, but they adapted and followed the
path inherent in their idea. Have the tenacity to follow where your innovation
leads (but try not to be stupid about it).

Be lucky, as in make yourself some luck. Success happens when you are in the
right place, at the right time, with the right innovation. (And being early
can be as bad as being late). Success may not come the first time, or second
or ..., but factoring in multiple attempts improves your chances and you gain
experience to boot.

~~~
nullandvoid
Well said - the final paragraph reminded me of the saying "success favours the
prepared"

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grepthisab
Lots of submissions from this same person from the same domain. Lots of upvote
points on a marketing topic meant to drive clicks. I'm guessing the OP is a
spammer and this submission is being gamed.

~~~
arbuge
It did seem like generic and low value marketing fluff to me and I was pretty
surprised to see this at the top of HN...

I very much doubt the tedious and meticulous process outlined by the author
has ever led to success for anyone in the software field. In a fraction of the
time that would probably take, you could write an MVP, throw it out there, and
get far more valuable real-life feedback on what the market thinks.

As for a good read on the article's topic, the gold standard is still this in
my opinion:

[http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)

~~~
mercer
I get the impression this kind of junk tends to bubble up especially on
Sundays.

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marksomnian
Look at OP's past submissions, in particular the domains.

~~~
dakna
And as of now, he has 2 articles on the front page. I wonder who votes for
that tech keyword salad.

~~~
chrisan
is HN susceptible to bots like reddit?

~~~
mercer
Yes. The moderation does a lot to counter it, and I'm sure there's tools to
detect voting rings and whatnot, but lots of stuff slips through the cracks...

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goodwink
This article would have been much better without the first section on
technology trends. I almost stopped reading when it looked like analyst
generated pr (perhaps demonstrating the AI trend with auto generated content).

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wingspar
My work Fortigate firewall is marking mindk.com as malicious.

~~~
aw3c2
It's just some SEO linkbait garbage written by a "Content Marketer". So
nothing you are missing out on.

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mgamache
One question: Is Low-code development really a thing that is gaining traction
or something that is real alternative to more traditional languages?

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vinceguidry
I liked the Maslow's hierarchy connection.

But really I think the main bottleneck keeping most devs from starting a
business is just how time consuming sales is, and partnering up with a sales
guy just isn't a good idea for a variety of reasons.

I'm not entirely sure what a solution would look like. A concierge-type
service that connects entrepreneurs with marketing channels?

~~~
friendly_chap
> partnering up with a sales guy just isn't a good idea for a variety of
> reasons.

Can you elaborate please?

~~~
vinceguidry
I tried several times to find a business partner. In general you can find a
lot of young, ambitious sales types that just don't understand the mindset
behind software. Working with them is, tricky.

With one guy, we moved in together, I built out a basically-functional
prototype and wanted to get market feedback. But he kept wanting to add
features and just wasn't helpful at all in the making of the product. And he
didn't seem to want to do what I saw as his job, selling the prototype. I felt
like I was doing all the work and ended the endeavor. We remain friends and
chat regularly, but I'm not jumping back into bed with him unless he can bring
something real to the table.

If product direction issues don't sink you, personal differences don't, at the
end of the day, working closely with another person with a different mindset
is just really hard, and it can easily be harder than just doing it all
yourself.

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techsin101
Is this inspired by startup secrets series

