I get that you need to work on existing problems that have users that will pay.
I get that you need a business model.
I get that it needs to be a market that is open enough.
But they rarely address how to generate ideas to work through. Perhaps I'm not entrepreneurial enough...but I refuse to believe that's the case. I get that you have to talk/observe users, but I don't know what market I'd like to engage and what I'd find interesting.
In short, I know programming well, but it doesn't mean a damn thing for creating my own products because I don't know what needs people have.
Step away from your computer (and HN) and talk to people. Socialize with folks who do other things besides programming and genuinely ask them about their work and how they do it. Get involved with people in your company outside of software development by volunteering to work with your Operations, Marketing, or Sales Engineering.
My point is that you're stuck in the Machine. The Machine will get you where you want to go but you don't know where that is yet. Get out of the Machine and look around you. The Machine will be there for you when your desire to get somewhere manifests as the result of having some life experiences.
I have the same problem.
Programming is the easy part for me, find ideas on the other hand is one of the hardest parts (after marketing a new product).
Most people I talk to, don't seem to have any problems. Or perhaps I (and they) just don't see them as problems that need to be solved.
I gloss over many problems because I put up with a lot due to programming.
Sometimes I think the best thing to do is walk away from it all and forget about the SaaS gold rush, trusting that a problem will find you. Feels like giving up, though.
Buils ie. for big markets:
- teens - 3D printing glasses (trendy, unique)
- parents - Q&A for childcare
- woman - new ways of slimming
There is no one proccess for finding ideas. There are clues for finding them.
If you don't see such idea for masses then you don't undestand particular market :/ If you are a parent you often search for some child-care problems solutions. If you see problems with advices structure there, and friends find it also, then build it.
Just check also Google Keyword Tool, thera are informations - what people are looking for / what lacks.
I'm in exactly the same situation as you. I have asked about it here before and the replies are "do A/B testing to figure out which idea is best" which is fine but only if you already have ideas.
There is really two problems: Creating ideas, and knowing which ideas are "stupid" and which you should try.
While it is easy to say "A/B test them all" that just isn't realistic with any level of time, cost, or personal constraints.
I'm yet to have any idea that passes the "would I pay money for that?" test. That's kind of a massive problem.
> I'm yet to have any idea that passes the "would I pay money for that?" test. That's kind of a massive problem.
This is a mindset problem for many developers. It's hard to realize most businesses love to pay money to make problems go away, however. When I was a consultant, I would have thrown money at a service which I could bill through, and it would auto-file my taxes with Uncle Sam without me having to do anything. Why? Because I forgot to do it, and had to pay penalties and such as one giant check when I filed for 2012.
Basically, what do people have to do that they dislike? Businesses have a bunch of those needs.
But, yes, the startup biz seems dominated by these pithy replies from people who've had success and just can't imagine how other people also aren't killing it. Posturing, pure and simple.
It's not just posturing, their success came easy to them and thus they truly believe success is easy. They don't recognize the huge role luck plays. There is also the fact that the problem you guys are describing is not a problem at all to many people, like the guys who say this is easy.
I am one of those for whom ideas are not a problem at all. Nor is assessing other peoples ideas to quickly figure out which would likely have a market and which would not.
I've just added writing a blog post about this to my to-do list, hopefully I can come up with something good and help a whole lot of you improve upon this if it hits the front page. It's going to be really difficult though to put into words exactly how and why I can easily do this. I've never really thought about that - I just do it. It comes naturally.
I'm going to put a lot more thought to this, but one thing that comes quickly to mind:
Engineers are trained to think of all of the possible things which might go wrong and prevent those from happening. That's the exact opposite mindset of a productive idea bot. The idea bot thinks of all of the possible things that might go right and only thinks about what might go wrong later (often times pointing those things out to the idea bot is a major role of a good engineer). With experience and practice they'll be able to dismiss ideas faster because they know what can go wrong but they still have an optimistic approach and a very open mind to new ideas. Engineers can have a pessimistic approach and a somewhat closed mind about new ideas.
So what you need to do is learn to flip that switch in your brain. Once you start actually building something, think about what can go wrong. But when you're thinking of ideas, dismiss every negative thought that enters your mind and think positive. What could go right, how much could I make from this if all goes perfectly etc. Get yourself excited. Excitement about ideas breeds more ideas.
I'm yet to have any idea that passes the "would I pay money for that?" test.
My apologies to the long-deceased quadruped I'm about to assault, but assuming you mean "I" as in yourself, the person writing, "would I pay money for that?" is only a useful question if you are confident that your target demographic's needs, goals, priorities, problems, and disposable income are extremely similar to your own.
Market research is hard, in no small part because people will unwittingly provide you false information all day long on what's worth solving and what they'd actually buy. Those are separate problems, though; starting off asking who your product should appeal to will then let you start investigating the right question, "will its intended target audience pay money for this?"
This presentation suggests noticing problems that have inelegant solutions over "thinking up startup ideas", synonymous with [thinking of ideas for companies that have nothing to do with solving problems or providing value].
Either this presentation was given to an audience of posers and kids or the presenter thought the audience was a bunch of posers and kids. Both scenarios sound awful.
If everyone listens to the same problems that people have and listens to similar customer views and uses the same MVP techniques, all startups become the same. Well, we're there - millions of graduates from business schools are coming up with the very same MVPs. In fact we're getting drowned by all these vertical startups. They are single-purpose tools that want to be the toothpick, the tweezer, the tiny saw of the Swiss Army knife.
I actually think we'll be heading for consolidation and eventually people will want broader tools that are more like universal knives that can be used in many different ways.
Uniqueness stands out and I think the next eye-opening startups we're going to see will have to break out of the limited MVP to scale mindset. MVPs are great tools, especially to determine the right technology and to gain early customer insight, but true product visions have to go far beyond them.
As author of this presentation, I see in europe that ie. tech-people who build startups don't see obvious problems as there is still a lot of space for competition. They start from tech-interesting solutions. This presentation is not about far future, but build for actual needs.
Rhakns. Some people doesn't even understand Lean Canvas, so C-P-S formula is lower threshold for entry into modeling startups :) simpliest model as possible, It was my purpose in this presentation.
There's no formula for starting up and there's no one way to do it. For example, if you have a truly game changing idea, you don't need to go the MVP route. Over time, it will become visible. What's more important in this case is that you stick with it until it gets widely used. This approach won't work for a more bottom-up idea that is based on some observation about the existing market. Then you're better of with an MVP with successive refinement.
It is not formula for all startups but when I see ideas on Startup Weekend it seems to me that I live in parallel world, when I read their ideas for solutions. They often goes from solution, let's try from problem/need.
Considering where privacy (or lack thereof) is headed, that may not be such a bad idea. I'm thinking some ways of encrypted mobile-to-mobile communication, file storage, maybe even encrypted video.
I can picture some startup somewhere coming up with a mobile P2P network/overlay that leverages an ad-hoc wifi mesh of some sort (avoiding carrier data limits) that lets users share everything and anything with just a psudonym. Or maybe even just a randomly generated key as a URI (I.E. Tor).
I've yet to see a simple implementation that I can install painlessly that lets me send text, let alone more complex stuff. Any startup that can deliver all that in this surveillance-happy atmosphere will make a killing.
> I'm thinking some ways of encrypted mobile-to-mobile communication, file storage, maybe even encrypted video.
There's a few good open source implementations out there already for phone calls and SMS. The two below were done by Moxie Marlinspike. They're built for Android, but I'm sure they can be ported elsewhere with the source being available.
I get that you need to work on existing problems that have users that will pay. I get that you need a business model. I get that it needs to be a market that is open enough.
But they rarely address how to generate ideas to work through. Perhaps I'm not entrepreneurial enough...but I refuse to believe that's the case. I get that you have to talk/observe users, but I don't know what market I'd like to engage and what I'd find interesting.
In short, I know programming well, but it doesn't mean a damn thing for creating my own products because I don't know what needs people have.