[silentfish]

I always hear about this abstract guidance to get ideas but haven't had a chance to find a domain expert willing to spend time on sharing the thoughts. What are good examples of when ideas generated this way formed a startup in the past?

[mmanulis]

For me, this started with some broad knowledge about a few industries. E.g. I have experience building connected devices and visualizing / analyzing data from those devices. I tried to meet as many senior managers as I could (think execs or experts) in my network. I knew I was interested in life sciences, energy management and robotics, so I sought out people in those industries.

I described what I was working on, what research I did on those industries and that I was looking to better understand the existing problems that might fit what I was interested in.

Some conversations did not lead anywhere, other times I got excellent, tactical, advice. That gave me more information and ideas, until I landed on my current project.

The reason this approach worked for me this time (as opposed to the other times I've tried this) is that I had a direction I was presenting and I did a bunch of research to get educated about some of these industries. I don't mean I studied it for some long time, but reading related subreddits, searching for conferences and looking up sponsor companies from that, learning some terms specific to those industries, etc. helped to have a better conversation.

While YMMV, getting warm intros to smart and successful people for a 15-20 minute phone conversation will expose you to what you don't know yet. This will result in you asking better questions, which can lead to more ideas.