How to Get Startup Ideas

The article was written by YCombinator’s Jared Friedman and covers three main areas:

  1. The most common mistake when pitching a startup idea
  2. How do you evaluate startup ideas
  3. How do you come up with a startup idea

The most common mistake when pitching a startup idea

  1. You think starting a business requires a smart idea, and until you have a smart idea, do nothing.

Take Google and Facebook, for example. When Google started, it was a 20th century search engine. When Facebook started, it was a dating site. What makes them successful is not a smart idea, but a good enough idea and execution.

  1. This is the opposite of the first idea. When you have an idea in your head, you tend to act on it without thinking about whether it’s a good idea or not

  2. You always start with a solution, not a problem

For example, if you come up with a drip water pipe repair, you develop an app, click a button, you can find a plumber, this is a solution, but what is the problem you really want to solve? Is it difficult to find a plumber?

If your startup idea is something like a drip plumbing solution, it’s usually not a good idea, because you can’t see the real problem, you need to find the problem first, and then you need to find the solution to the problem

  1. The final mistake is that you think startup ideas are hard to find.

On the contrary, there are a lot of real problems in the world, and when you find them, you find ideas

How do you evaluate startup ideas

  1. How big is your idea?

The best way to judge this is to look for existing, large companies doing similar things, and your idea is more likely to succeed if the company is large

  1. How sure are you that you’re solving a problem?

Ideally, you have personal experience dealing with this problem. But do you have any new, important insights into this idea? Airbnb is a good example. When Airbnb started, most people thought the idea of letting strangers you met online sleep in your apartment was really weird and potentially dangerous. But Airbnb’s founders did try this. They would invite strangers from the Internet to live with them, and they realized it was really fun. So they figured out that everyone else was wrong, which is why Airbnb is a good idea.

Here’s an important sign that your idea might be a good one: you’re doing what you want. It turns out that it’s a lot easier to build a successful company if you’re doing what you want, not what someone else wants. First, you have at least one user, yourself, but more importantly, you can trust your instincts when creating things for yourself. If you’re creating something for someone else, you have to guess what they want.

  1. Don’t dismiss an idea that’s hard to get off the ground

Take Stripe for example. Before Stripe, it was very difficult to integrate a payment function into a website so that customers could pay by credit card. A lot of people knew about this problem, but no one had solved it because it seemed so difficult to solve, you had to deal with a lot of banks, do payment, do security, etc.

  1. Don’t dismiss a boring startup idea

  2. Don’t dismiss an ambitious startup idea

Founders instinctively shy away from really ambitious ideas because they are intimidating. But often, those ideas turn into really big companies.

  1. Don’t instinctively steer clear of ideas from existing competitors

When you set out to build a product with no competition, you often find that the reason you have no competition is because no one wants the product. Ideally, you want to enter a market where there are competitors, but you can offer something the competitors don’t have or lack.

How do you come up with a startup idea

  1. Know what a good startup idea is

Only when you know what a good startup idea is, when you come across it or think of it, can you grab it

  1. Make a list of the things you want people to do for you

  2. Focus on something that if you do it for 10 years, you’ll still be excited about even if it doesn’t work out

  3. Focus on recent events that have changed the world

  4. Focus on companies that have been successful recently

  5. Brainstorm and talk to your friends/family about what they want most

  6. Focus on industries that seem outdated or bankrupt

Only if you understand these industries can you understand why they are obsolete or bankrupt and find an idea to replace them.