[cookiecaper]

"Great" ideas are a dime a dozen, at least on paper. No one can do anything about the standards you and your co-founder set for yourself, but there is an abundance of opportunity out there. Almost any source of annoyance can be parlayed into a useful product.

I say "on paper" because no idea is worth anything until it is at least partially implemented, and no concept remains static throughout the implementation process.

And let me further clarify that you don't even need an original idea. Most successful companies are entirely non-groundbreaking, perhaps even blase. Breaking ground is expensive, financially and psychologically. Let someone else break ground and not only will the path already be blazed, but you'll have the record of their experience to inform your choices, and you'll know the pain points that people have with them. (The upside is, any given project is probably far less groundbreaking than it imagines, especially in the kool-aid drenched environs of Silicon Valley).

Think early search engines, many of which leverage or improve upon phonebook-style directories, and Google -- Google came later, and as such, knew that they needed something better than AltaVista et al could offer. Early social networks and Facebook, etc. The list goes on.